To unseen angels.

Copyright © 2017 by Austin J. Bailey.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at austin@austinjbailey.com

Note: This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Author Website: www.austinjbailey.com

When you’re finished reading, the story continues in BOOK TWO, Simon Fayter and the Tomb of Rone.

CLICK HERE TO START READING

Prologue: Blue Eye, Brown Eye

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

—Nelson Mandela1

On midsummer’s day, in a small suburban neighborhood with curving streets and brightly colored houses, a child was born with one blue eye and one brown eye. His mother brought him home from the hospital the day after he was born and rocked him to sleep in a stream of sunshine coming through the front window. She named him Simon.

If Simon’s mother had looked through her window and across the street to the daisy-colored house, she might have seen an old woman watching her. The old woman across the street had nine cats and no family and spent her days knitting and spying on her neighbors. She was smiling now, because she had seen Simon’s mother return from the hospital with a brand-new baby boy. She could not know, of course, that the boy had one blue eye and one brown eye, or what that meant, or what trouble it would bring. Perhaps if she did, she would not have been so happy. As it was, she smiled and leaned her head back in her rocking chair and remembered the long years of her life and fell asleep.

She never woke up. She was old, after all, and eventually everyone must die. But this is a happy story (for the most part), so I am pleased to report that she died of natural causes and was not forgotten, or eaten by her cats, as can sometimes happen. In fact, the police arrived to collect her the very next morning. Animal control officers came for her cats, movers came to pack all her things into boxes, cleaners came to shampoo the cat smell out of her carpet, and before the sun had set, the yellow house was empty. A man from the bank stopped by to hammer a bright red “For Sale” sign in the front garden. Then he got a phone call and pulled the sign back out again. The house had already been sold.

No sooner had the bank man left than a taxi cab dropped off a very old, very portly2 man. He wore blue jeans and a pair of old leather work boots. His head was bald, but he had the largest curly white mustache you have ever seen. Apart from the mustache, he looked quite normal, except that one of his eyes was blue and the other was brown.

He surveyed the neighborhood for a moment, taking special care not to look directly at the house where the young mother lived with her new baby, and then walked up to his new residence, carrying in his arms the only two objects he owned: an old plaid handbag and a small potted plant (a ficus). At the door, he opened the handbag, produced a key, and went inside.

It smelled clean, which was good; personally, the man didn’t mind cats, but Finnigan was allergic. He locked the door and tossed the ficus into the air so that it tumbled, end over end, sprinkling dirt. Before it hit the ground, the man said in a commanding tone, “Finnigan!” and the ficus transformed into a nine-foot-tall midnight-blue gorilla.3

“Did you have to toss me like that, Atticus?” Finnigan said. His voice was deep, so deep it made your chest vibrate to hear it. “You got dirt on the carpet.”

The old man shrugged.

“Boy or girl?” Finnigan asked.

“Boy,” Atticus said. “Born the day before yesterday. He and his mother are in the house across the street.”

“Eyes?”

“Blue and brown.”

Finnigan grunted, then crossed the room and peeked through the blinds. “Any activity yet?”

Atticus snorted. “Doubt it. Bloodhounds won’t be able to sniff him out for at least another week.”

Finnigan raised an eyebrow. “You said this one might be different.”

“I always say that.” Atticus opened his handbag and reached inside. The bag was only a few inches deep, but his arm disappeared to the shoulder. Then he pulled out something massive, squishy, and orange, which spilled out of the mouth of the bag as if it couldn’t wait to escape. A second later, Atticus sank into the plushy orange armchair and set the bag on his lap.

“Help me decorate, will you?”

He began whipping objects out at random and tossing them to Finnigan. Kitchen chairs and a table flew across the room and the dugar caught them with ease, setting them in their appropriate places. As the unpacking continued, Finnigan made occasional comments and complaints about the items. The kitchen furniture was followed by seven bookshelves, complete with books (“Do we really need all these? You know, they have a thing here called a Kindle…”); an old black and white television set (“Honestly, get a flat screen!”); a sofa; a card table; a Porta-Potty; a water bed, complete with water; and—

“The kitchen sink, Atticus? Really? Houses come with their own kitchen sinks!”

The old man bristled. “That was my grandmother’s kitchen sink, Finnigan, as you well know.” Atticus snapped his fingers and the oversized copper sink zoomed out of Finnigan’s hands and around the corner. There were several loud clangs and a metallic groan, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

Finnigan pointed an accusatorial blue finger at Atticus. “That sink is a bully, Atticus. It has just thrown the old one through the window. I don’t see why you require all of your cantankerous4 possessions when we’re only staying for a week.”

“Never mind that now,” Atticus said. He retrieved a book from one of the shelves and settled back into his chair. “Get back to the window and keep a lookout.”

Finnigan leaned a massive blue arm against the wall above the window and peered out. After a few minutes he said, “Do you remember the days before you became a knight of the Circle? When we were the ones on guard duty, required to watch over these children for the full term?”

“I seem to remember you doing a lot of complaining,” Atticus muttered.

“Because I got so bored,” Finnigan said. “I wasn’t made for all that sitting around. You can’t tell me you liked sitting around for thirteen long years, reading your books, and waiting for these kids to grow up. Honestly, without the periodic monster attacks, I would die of cabin fever.”5

“Our work is a privilege, no matter how menial,” Atticus said automatically.

“Just the same,” Finnigan said, “I’m glad that part of it is over. It’s much nicer to set up the guardhouse and then let someone else do all the waiting. Mind you, one week locked in this house with you should still be enough to make me crazy. I wish something interesting would happen. Bloodhounds night after night. Why don’t they ever send along something more dangerous for us to deal with?”

Atticus shot him a disapproving glare over the top of his book. “You just pray they never do, Finnigan.”

Finnigan puffed his large gorilla lips irritably and rested his forehead against the window in resignation.

“Maybe you need a hobby,” Atticus said without looking up. He turned another page. “You could take up knitting,” he said absently. “This world has cold nights. I could use a new sweater, and some blankets wouldn’t hurt us, either—”

“Atticus!”

Atticus rose to his feet, book forgotten. “What is it?”

Finnigan backed away from the window slowly. “A shade,” he said. There was something between terror and excitement in his voice.

“Impossible,” Atticus whispered, stepping to the window. “I would have sensed its presence.”

Sure enough, a figure, hooded and cloaked, stood facing the house across the street. Darkness condensed around it as if it were a shadow of the night itself.

Atticus shivered. Like few others, he had faced shades before. Like even fewer, he had lived to tell the tale. But there was something wrong about this shade. It did not advance on the house, nor did it turn to face them. It seemed to be…thinking.

“It’s not a shade,” he concluded.

Finnigan moved back to the window cautiously. “What, then?”

“I think…yes. I think it is him.”

He froze. “Him?” Finnigan asked. “How? Why?”

Atticus’s eyes were still glued to the figure across the street, and he did not answer. Finally, as if sensing his gaze, the figure turned. It slowly raised its hands and lowered its hood, revealing a golden mask in the shape of a jackal’s head. To someone from Earth it would have looked Egyptian, but to Atticus it spoke of a much darker heritage.

“The Shadeking,” Finnigan whispered. “The Jackal himself.” And for the first time in a hundred years, Atticus heard true fear in the dugar’s voice. “This is the end of us, Atticus.”

Atticus turned to the dugar, eyes steeled in resolution. “So be it,” he whispered. “Break it down.”

Finnigan doubled in size, like a snake erupting from a tight coil. He exploded forward, bursting through the front wall as if it were made of paper, and roared, filling the night air with the threat of death. Mortals would not hear him, but they would roll over uneasily in their sleep. Even the Shadeking would feel a twinge of trepidation at the full-throated roar of a dugar’s wrath.

Atticus stepped through the hole where the wall used to be and calmly walked down the front lawn. He stopped at the sidewalk and raised both arms, flicking his wrists. He felt steel fill his hands and raised two swords before him, each bright white and wreathed in red fire.

“We will not allow you to take the child,” he declared. Beside him, Finnigan growled.

The Shadeking didn’t move. Red light from the swords danced across his golden mask, and the Jackal’s head tilted thoughtfully. “Atticus Muse,” it said in a voice like ten men speaking at once.

Atticus felt the hairs on his neck prickle. Even if he had the whole Circle of Eight at his side, this was not a fight that he could win. Finnigan was right—they would die tonight.

Over the Shadeking’s shoulder, Atticus could see the young woman rocking her baby to sleep by lamp light. She would not hear or see what was going on. She would not know what was happening when the Shadeking attacked. Atticus glanced at the boy, just a tiny bundle from this distance. Who was he, to attract the attention of the Shadeking himself? What was the child destined to become?

“Cease your dark thoughts, Atticus,” the Shadeking said. “I have not come to kill, but to look.” And he turned his back to them, facing the house again.

Finnigan glanced sideways at Atticus, clearly confused, but the wizard said nothing.

“Guard him well,” the Shadeking said, breaking the silence again. “Many will want him dead. But you and I, Atticus, we need him alive. He’s important, this…Simon.” He spoke the name delicately, as if tasting it. Then he took a single giant step into the dark street and vanished without a sound.

The night calmed gradually in the Shadeking’s absence, like a child roused from a nightmare; the streetlamps shed their pleasant circles of light upon the black tarmac, crickets could be heard again in the grass, and somewhere, an owl hooted at the moon. Finnigan breathed a sigh of relief and returned to his normal size.

Atticus let his swords fade but did not move. He stood there for several minutes until he was convinced that the Shadeking was truly gone, then he put his hands in his pockets and strode back up the front lawn with Finnigan in tow. As they passed through the wrecked front wall, Finnigan said, “What just happened?”

But the wizard did not answer. He crossed to his chair and eased himself into it, reaching into his bag to retrieve a large weather-beaten leather sketchpad. He opened it, took out a short brown oil pastel from his pocket, and began to draw, eyeing the front wall carefully. As he drew, the wall mended itself before their eyes, each fragmented piece snapping back into its proper place, so that in less than a minute, it was perfectly whole again. When it was finished, Atticus closed the pad, eyeing his work critically.

“What just happened?” Finnigan repeated. But again the wizard ignored him. Rising from his chair, he moved to the bookcase and ran his finger along a row of leather spines.

“I don’t understand why the Shadeking would come himself,” Finnigan continued. “He hasn’t been seen in years. He never leaves people alive. I was sure he would kill us.”

“Ah, here it is!” Atticus snatched a book from the shelf and turned. “I have decided that we will be guarding this boy personally. A child that attracts the attention of the Shadeking himself merits special treatment, don’t you think?”

“The full thirteen years?” Finnigan groaned. “Us?”

He handed the book to Finnigan, then sank back into the armchair.

Finnigan glanced down at the volume in his hand and frowned. It read: A Beginner’s Guide to Knitting. Finnigan gave Atticus a scathing look.

“Yes,” Atticus said.

Finnigan gave a deep sigh and sank into the sofa.

“What are you doing?” Atticus snapped, making Finnigan jump.

“But you said—”

“Read by the window. You must keep a lookout. As you say, the Jackal is no doubt going to kill us. If not tonight, then perhaps tomorrow. Whatever this is, it has only just begun. Mark my words: Guarding that boy will be no picnic!”

Finnigan started to say something, but Atticus disappeared behind his own book. The dugar let out a low growl and crossed to the window, glancing at the house across the street. But he brought the knitting book. It was going to be a long thirteen years, after all, and if he lived through them, he might as well be warm.

1. The Toilet of Doom

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.

—William Shakespeare6

Congratulations. If you are extremely dull witted, you have just finished reading the prologue. Prologues are a ploy that authors use to distract you from the real story. I always skip them, and I recommend you do the same. Here’s what I mean: After reading the prologue, you might think that Atticus and Finnigan are important characters in this story. They’re not. They’re likeable and funny, and impressive, and you probably want to hear more about them, but in a few pages, they die.

Just kidding.

They don’t die. But they do completely drop out of the book. See? What a waste of time…You see, prologues are often written from a different perspective than the rest of the book. So if you expect this book to be written in third person, you’re wrong. It’s in first person. It has to be, obviously, because it’s my story. I’m the baby, by the way. The one with one blue eye and one brown eye. I bet you want to know what that whole eye color thing is about, don’t you? Too bad. Maybe later. On the bright side, unlike Finnigan, you don’t have to wait thirteen years to find out what happens next. Observe:

I turned thirteen on a Saturday. As if that wasn’t good enough, it was also midsummer’s day, which meant that my birthday was the longest day of the year. Furthermore, Mom took the day off work, which partially made up for it being an unlucky day.7 We went bowling and then rented out the go-kart track. This was followed by Chinese takeout. I had the ham fried noodles, two egg rolls (Yep, they were way too oily.), sweet and sour chicken, teriyaki rice, and egg drop soup. I followed it up with some soft-serve ice cream and a fortune cookie (neither of which are actually Chinese). Then I was still hungry, so I had—

What’s that? You don’t care what I had for dinner? Fine. You will now be punished for interrupting me. Your punishment is to hear some stories about the thirteen years of my childhood that I was going to skip until that ungrateful disturbance.

I was a mostly normal child, except that I was a complete freak. More specifically, I was both the luckiest and unluckiest person in the world, depending on what day of the week it was.

It started on my seventh birthday. I blew out the candles on my birthday cake and set the house on fire. The icing had some sort of strange chemical defect, which began when a sleep-deprived truck driver in Wisconsin mistook his rig for someone else’s and ended when a tired factory worker in New Mexico used rocket fuel instead of high-fructose corn syrup.8

Anyway, one little blow from me and the cake lit up like a volcano. Flames eight feet high, melted ceiling tiles, burning insulation, the whole bit. We barely escaped with our lives.

The next day I was lucky. I woke up with a terrible stomachache, and since our medicine cabinet had burned up after my cake bomb obliterated the upstairs bathroom, Mom took me to the drugstore to get some bismuth. We live in one of those strange states where gambling is completely legal, so there were slot machines right next to the shopping cart return. My mom asked me to get a cart and I stepped on a piece of gum, then tripped while trying to scrape it off my shoe.9 I grabbed the lever of the slot machine to steady myself and it cranked down (some poor soul had left a quarter in there).

We won $874,209.25.

Now, that’s a lot of money for a family of two. It was enough to buy a brand-new car right then and there, and my mom said it was enough to send me to any college of my choice, except for Cal Berkeley, which, besides being egregiously expensive, is principally attended by crazy people. (That’s me talking. Mom is very polite, even to Californians.)

It went on like that right up until my thirteenth birthday. One day lucky, the next, unlucky. Before long, I thought I had figured it out: Mondays were lucky, Tuesdays unlucky, and so on. Thankfully, with seven days in the week it was always the same…

Not.

Monday, lucky.

Tuesday, unlucky. Wednesday, lucky. Thursday, cake bombs. Friday, master long division in eight minutes. Saturday, unlucky. Sunday, lucky.

Monday, unlucky.

See what happened there? Needless to say, I learned to use a calendar.

Life went on, and in short order, I became internationally famous. I survived after being swallowed by a killer whale.10 I accidentally discovered an illegal nuclear waste dump while mountain biking. I fell out of an airplane and broke nothing but my left earlobe.11 I was investigated by the FBI three times before I was nine.

Despite what they claimed, I know they suspected me of being an alien. The Feds always suspect you’re an alien. Don’t believe me? Next time they slap the cuffs on you, look one straight in the eye and in your squeakiest voice say, “Take me to your leader.” Watch how they jump.

The good news is, things became less dramatic as I matured. By the time I hit twelve, cake bombs had become flat tires, and gambling fortuosity12 had become accidentally studying the exact eleven pages out of three hundred that actually mattered for the English test. Drastic stuff still happened now and then, but not often, and I never had two unlucky days in a row…except on leap year.

Leap year…Why two unlucky days? Go figure. I suppose next time it will be the opposite. Anyway, it’s bad when that happens.

On February 28th,13 I didn’t wake up at all. My mom took me to the hospital. The doctors thought I was in a comma.

Just kidding. You can’t be in a comma.14 They thought I was in a coma.15 But I wasn’t. I was in a deep, unlucky sleep, during which I had nightmares of being accidentally trapped alone in a hospital bakery where I ate doughnuts for fifteen hours straight and gained nine pounds. The kicker is that I actually did get accidentally left alone in a hospital bakery, and I did eat doughnuts for fifteen hours straight and gain nine pounds. All from a hospital bed, mind you, and all without waking up. (I’m pretty sure a nurse got fired over that.)

And that was just unlucky day number one. On February 29th, I lost all nine pounds that I had gained during my Coma-Induced Acute Nocturnal Sleep-Related Eating Disorder. Yes, it happened just like you’re thinking. No, I don’t like to talk about it. I will tell you we had to completely replace the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. Again.

Your punishment is now over.

As I was saying, my thirteenth birthday was on a Saturday and, as it happened, Saturday was unlucky that week. But I wasn’t going to let that get me down. I would probably get off easy as long as I didn’t do anything dangerous. I told myself maybe I would skip the go-kart racing.

The phone rang downstairs and I froze, one leg in my jeans, listening.

“Hi, Mr. A.,” Mom said.

Don’t, I thought. Don’t say you can.

“Well, it’s Simon’s birthday today and we were planning on…Oh. Oh, I see. Okay, I suppose I can come over.”

I groaned. Much like lemmings and the French, my mother is physically incapable of saying the word “no.”

Whatever you do, I thought, don’t say I can come, too.

“Of course he can come, too. I’m sure he’ll be excited to turn in his ethics report.”

I flopped onto my bed in defeat, beating my head into the pillow repeatedly for dramatic effect.16

Mom knocked on the door, then pushed it open. “Happy Birthday!” she crowed.

“Mostly,” I amended, glaring at her.

Her face fell. “You heard?” She was walking around the room now, picking up stray laundry items. “It won’t take long,” she promised. “He’s done so much for us, Simon. You know how he gets. I just can’t say no to the man.” Her arms were full of laundry now and she dumped it on my bed with a smile. “No laundry today, Simon. It’s your birthday…but I do hope you’ll clean your room sometime this year.”

I held my glare without flinching.

“I’m sure you heard me tell Mr. A. that you’d bring your ethics report.” She smiled again, knowing I had heard, and that I did not want to turn it in yet. “We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.” She closed the door.

I grumbled something nasty under my breath and then searched for my ethics report. It was on my desk, somewhere. My desk was piled three feet high with a collection of curiosities that would have made any vigilante college professor/archaeologist17 proud, and like so much of my life, it was dedicated to the ridiculous and never-ending lessons of Mr. A.

Mom started cleaning house for our eccentric neighbor shortly after I was born. Back then, she had nothing. No job, no savings, no lottery winnings, no husband. Just a new baby and a house payment. My mom had a bunch of family, but they were all in the military, which meant they were spread out all over the world, none of them close to us. In fact, my mom had been in the military (Air Force)18 before she had me, but after she saw my cute baby-blue eyes (okay, eye, since we’ve established one was brown…) she decided to get out and spend more time with me. That’s when Mr. A. suggested that she help him with some cooking and cleaning. He paid her well for it. Too well. He was rich.

At first, when I was old enough to wonder, I assumed Mom let Mr. A. tutor me because he was so rich. Maybe if I could grow up to be like Mr. A., we could be rich, too, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore.

Then I got old enough to realize how much money $800,000 is, and I learned that after a few savvy investments (made on one of my lucky days, of course—I made sure she brought me along), my mom never really had to work again. But she wanted me to be smart, and Mr. A. was an expert on everything. According to the certificates on his walls, he had been a professor overseas. Why Mr. A. left his interesting life and moved to our boring American neighborhood was a complete mystery, unless his whole purpose was to make me miserable.

I did more homework for Mr. A. than for all my regular teachers combined. And the workload alone wasn’t the only problem. Mr. A. was eccentric. That was the word Mom used. I thought he was a deranged old fruitcake (albeit, a brilliant one). After five years of private tutoring, I was easily the smartest kid at school. Smarter than most of the teachers, actually, though I don’t like to brag. The truth of the matter (and I tell you this in the strictest confidence) was that I secretly enjoyed my lessons with Mr. A. and wouldn’t have traded them for the world. But I couldn’t let them know that.

I rummaged, searching. There were stacks of papers (previous projects), a collection of fountain-pen inks in various colors,19 and a barrage of tiny plants in paper cups. Every year I had a different focus with Mr. A. One year it was classic literature, then applied mathematics, then logic and reasoning. Last year’s focus was botany (hence the plants), and this year was ethics. There were fifteen ancient leather-backed philosophy books on the desk, all of them borrowed from Mr. A. They smelled of dust and were very boring, but I had read them all in preparation for my final report. My “capstone project” as Mr. A. called it.

I located the paper and picked it up. It was fifty pages long, handwritten, and held together by a giant paperclip because it was too thick to staple. It was entitled “Kant’s Sublime Answer to the Minutiae of Modern Morals.” I was proud of that title.

Unfortunately, the paper was a complete yawn. It had taken two months to write, and it was perfect. Perfectly boring. Any college philosophy teacher would have given me an A. Mr. A. would probably frown with displeasure and then set it on fire.

I stuffed the stack of papers under my arm, wishing for something different to hand in. Another option. A backup plan. Suddenly an idea struck and I bent over a notepad and picked up a pen. A ballpoint pen. Mr. A. wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t like the notepaper, either.20 I thought for a moment, then smiled and jotted down a list of four things. If Mr. A. didn’t like my first project, he could have the list instead.

I was almost out of my room when the pain hit me worse than it ever had before. The sudden shock of pain inside my brain made my temper flare, as it always did, and I punched the door, scattering papers.

“Simon?” Mom called up from below. “You okay?”

“Yep,” I lied, knuckling my forehead. Just breathe, I told myself. It would be over soon. Or my head would explode. Either way, I’d feel better. Plus if my head exploded, I wouldn’t have to turn in my paper.

I’d always had headaches, but they were getting worse. Yesterday I nearly blacked out. The day before, it was accompanied by a blinding light. I’d seen all sorts of doctors, and they all thought it was caused by something different—growing pains, adolescent chemical imbalance, cramping of the suboccipital muscles, subluxation of the C2 vertebra, harmonic dissonance between the crown and third-eye chakras. None of them could help.21

I might have known a headache was coming. I’d had a dream last night, the same dream I always had: a giant blue gorilla and a knight with flaming swords. Sometimes they were on the front lawn fighting shadows. Sometimes they were inside my house, standing guard at my door. Once, the gorilla had come into my room to fight off a blood-red hound that was trying to eat me while I slept. Strange dreams. I never told anyone about them.

Last year I read five books on dream interpretation, determined to find out what they meant. Depending on who you listened to, the dreams meant that I was afraid of the color red, I was destined to become a famous sumo wrestler, I was feeling guilty about stealing a yellow bathtub, I had the soul of a cat, or that my death would be caused by the number 17. I decided the dreams meant nothing at all.22

Then last month I noticed a curious thing: Every night with a dream was followed by a day with a headache. Which meant the dreams were somewhat useful. Like a weather report that makes you dread the day: “Gorilla attacks dog in the night. Tomorrow afternoon, 95% chance of pain.”

When the pain dissipated, I got my stuff together and went downstairs. Then I went back upstairs, because I’d forgotten the most important thing: my Nintendo DS. I never went anywhere without it,23 and I only ever put one game in it. The only game you need. The best game in the world: Mario Kart. I might not have time to play it today, but it would come along in my back pocket just in case.

Mr. A.’s house was small and strange. Bookcases covered one side of the living room. The rest of the wall space not already occupied by diplomas and bug collections was filled with original paintings by Mr. A. himself, most of which looked like they had been done by a five-year-old. I studied these as much as possible to remind myself that he wasn’t perfect. There was a small ficus on a side table that I was not allowed to touch under any circumstances. Beside the ficus was a stack of huge, lopsided woolen sweaters that looked as if they had been knitted by a monkey. Behind me hung a photograph of an epic French castle town called Mont Saint-Michel.

Mr. A. was studying my paper carefully. Of course, Mr. A. could speed read, (a skill that he had passed on to me), so he got through all fifty pages in about two and a half minutes. During that time, he did not so much as raise an eyebrow. He didn’t even smile at the joke on page 38 regarding the life expectancy of existentialist geese. When he had finished, Mr. A. looked up at me from his hideous orange armchair beside the fire and said, “Simon, this is at once awfully thorough, and thoroughly awful.” Then he leaned over and started feeding it to his fire. The old goat.

Any other day, I might have exploded, but in honor of my birthday, I forced myself to be a good boy, get out from under Mr. A.’s tyrannical thumb, and enjoy myself as much as possible.

“I thought you might say that,” I said.

Mr. A. cleared his throat. “You knew I wouldn’t like it, yet you still turned it in?”

I shrugged.

Mr. A. dropped the last sheet into the fire and gave me a stern look, leaning back into his chair. “Simon, for years I’ve taught you how to think, how to reason. We’ve done history, mathematics, biology, sociology, psychology, geology, theology.” He held up a finger. “For all of that, one man cannot teach another what to care about. That’s what this project was for, Simon. That’s what—”

“Maybe you’ll like this better, sir,” I said, thrusting the slightly crumpled sheet of notepaper in his face.

Mr. A. took it and wrinkled his nose. “And what is this?”

“It’s all I really care about,” I said. “The bottom line. What I need to focus on, as you always say, to be my best self. I got the idea from your story about the knights of Vilaen.”

Mr. A. was reading and re-reading my note. “A knight’s code,” he said, breaking into a full smile. “Yes. A four-point code. Very good. This is better, much better, Simon. This is more perfect than you can possibly imagine. Though I must say, you might have had the decency to jot it down on some real paper.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “So the project’s done? Excellent. But don’t give me the next assignment today, okay? It’s my birthday…”

“Simon—”

“At least wait till next week, Mr. A. Please? Have a heart.”

“Simon, there will be no more projects.”

I stared at him blankly. “What?”

“You’re done.” He waved a hand. “I have nothing left to teach you. You have graduated.”

I was stunned. “But…I’m only thirteen.”

Mr. A. folded the penguin paper reverently and put it in his shirt pocket. Then he picked his book up off the side table and opened it. “That’s generally when boys stop listening,” he said without looking up. “Perfect time to stop teaching them.

“But—”

Mr. A. sighed and shut his book. “Have you or have you not been wishing for this day since your tutelage24 began seven years ago?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then you should be pleasantly surprised that it has come years earlier than you anticipated.” He twisted the end of his mustache. “If you wish to wait for your mother in here, please be quiet. Otherwise, you are free to go.” He paused thoughtfully. “Actually, Simon, if you don’t mind, come back tonight at 11:30 for some parting words. I will be leaving town after that.” He opened his book again and his eyes darted down the page.

I looked at the clock, mind numb. Mom would be another twenty minutes at least. I could hear her in the kitchen washing dishes, humming. Did she know about this? My tutoring, over. It didn’t make any sense.

“On the dot,” he said.

“What?”

“11:30. On the dot.”

“Fine,” I said, and I went out to sit on the porch.

The rest of the day was completely ruined, of course. I couldn’t think of anything but Mr. A., and 11:30 couldn’t come fast enough. When it did come, I arrived on time.

I knocked, and Mr. A. opened the door instantly.

“Mr. A.,” I began, starting in on one of the clever arguments I had been preparing.

He cut me off with a gesture. “No time for clever arguments, Simon. Where’s your mother?”

“She’s uh, at the house…Did you want me to—”

“No. Get inside.” He pulled me through the door. Then he picked up an ancient-looking phone and dialed my mother’s number. His voice was pitched high, his face contorted as if in pain. “Yes, Marie, I’ve gone terribly ill. No, no. Listen, I need some valerian root as fast as you can get it. Please hurry.” He made a groaning sound. “No. Simon can stay with me till you get back.” My mind raced. He was obviously lying. But why?

He hung up the receiver and crossed to the window. I saw my mom rush out of the house and drive away.

“Excellent.” Mr. A. rubbed his hands together briskly, then handed me a cup of tea. “Drink this as fast as you can.” He glanced at the clock. “Now, you were born at 11:37 exactly. That gives us about five minutes. There are some things we need to talk about.” He cleared his throat. “You’ve been having headaches?”

“Uh…” I said, still staring out the window. This all seemed very strange.

“SIMON!” Mr. A. clapped his hands in front of my face, making me jump. “Drink that now!” He tipped the cup to my mouth and I took a sip. Immediately, I felt a sense of relief wash over me. I was no longer worried. I felt carefree—cheerful even. It tasted of Chamomile and…something.

“You’ve been getting headaches?”

“Yeah—yes. Everyone knows that.”

“But they don’t know why. I do.”

I looked up in surprise. “You do?”

He nodded. “I do. It is a buildup of pressure caused by the burgeoning of your power. Once you crack, the pressure will dissipate.”

I gaped at him. “Once I what?”

“Take a drink,” he urged. I did, and felt suddenly calmer. He sighed and glanced at the clock. “This part is always so rushed. I wish the regulations were different. Crack, I said…Break is another term.” He sighed. “Simon, you’ve been having dreams.”

I stared at him. “Yeah…”

“Dreams of a blue gorilla. And blood-red hounds. Like that one.” He jabbed a thumb at the window and I was horrified to see one of my dream demons walking up the lawn. It approached the window and sniffed at the glass. Then another one entered the yard, and another.

“Aaahh!” I exclaimed, rising to my feet. “It’s…but—”

“Take another drink!” Mr. A. barked.

I complied without thinking, draining what tea I had not sloshed all over the rug in my panic. Once again, I felt much better. I was being silly. Whatever was going on, Mr. A. had it under control.

“They’re coming for you tonight, Simon, because tonight you break.”

“Okay,” I said, tearing my eyes from the window. Those dogs still made me a bit uneasy.

Mr. A. picked up his ficus and tossed it across the room. “Finnigan, more tea.” he said, and a giant blue gorilla hit the floor where the plant should have. I think my jaw might have hit the floor as well.

“Time?” the gorilla rumbled, bustling into the kitchen.

“Two minutes out.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting down on the sofa. I stared at my hands, wiggling my fingers.

“The mother is gone?” The gorilla came back carrying a teapot and refilled my cup.

“Safe for now,” Mr. A. returned.

My fingers seemed normal, but I snapped them just to make sure. I felt quite sane, minus the talking blue gorilla-ficus.

“Merciful gods,” the gorilla said, peering out the window. “I’ve never seen so many.” I followed his gaze and saw the lawn covered with dogs, dozens of them, shivering and panting with anticipation. One of them jumped at the glass and bounced off. Across the street, our house was overrun. I got to my feet.

“Sixty seconds,” Mr. A. said. “Get the breaker bar, Finnigan.” He pushed me none too gently back onto the sofa as the gorilla sped away and returned with what looked like a thin aluminum bar. “Hold this,” he said. I set down my cup and took it.

For the briefest ghost of a moment, I thought about running out of the house, waving my hands in the air, and shouting for the police. But it passed. Let’s face it—I had to see what happened next. Also, there were killer dogs outside.

Mr. A. was attaching what looked like electrical jumper cables to a black box that he slipped out from under the couch. He attached the other ends to the bar in my hands. “Finnigan, give him more tea.”

“What’s in there?” I asked, looking at the box.

“Celestial lamben,” Mr. A. said. “Liquid starlight to you.” Finnigan tipped the teacup to my mouth as Mr. A. continued. “When I flip this switch, the case will depressurize and the liquid will evaporate instantly, releasing a colossal amount of energy into the breaker bar. The energy will overwhelm you, boiling your blood and melting your central nervous system.”

“Cool,” I said. (I’d finished the cup again.)

“Ten,” the gorilla said, “nine, eight…”

“I know it sounds bad,” Mr. A. rushed on, “but this will force your power to break through. It’s standard procedure, and far better than the alternative.”

“Okey dokey,” I said cheerily. I felt incredibly relaxed. I stared down at the empty teacup and it occurred to me that he might have spiked it with something. Oh well, Mr. A. knew best…

Finnigan was watching me. “Keep your hands on the bar! Four.”

Dogs bounced off the window like cannon balls. It cracked in the center.

“Three.”

I hoped my mom didn’t find that medicine too quickly. This would be terribly difficult to explain if she walked in. I giggled at the thought.

“Two.”

Looking at him now, I wasn’t sure if that blue gorilla was actually a gorilla at all. Could gorillas be blue?

“One.”

Just think: all of this on an unlucky day. How’s that for bad timing?

“Zero.”

Mr. A. flicked a switch and time stopped. The box turned the radiant hue of light on fire, and the window shattered, dogs cascading inward in slow motion, feet dangling in midair. There were darker things behind the dogs now, drawing near—tall, thin shadows that my eyes wouldn’t focus on.

The bar in my hand went hot, then cold, and then the box exploded.

It was like being in the center of a supernova. No noise, just a silent, white, oppressive force unmaking everything—the house, the dogs, the street. They were all gone in a flash, replaced by melted relics of their former selves. There was a loud, mind-numbing ringing in my ears.

When I could see again, someone picked me up and slung me over one shoulder. It was Mr. A. He was carrying me through his house, or what was left of it. The roof was gone and starlight shined across the mangled heap of floor and buckled walls. The front yard was empty of dogs, but more of the shadow things had come now, and Finnigan stood between them and us like a furry blue barricade.

I shook my head. “What happened?”

“No time to explain,” Mr. A. said. “Get in here.”

He set me down and I saw that he was trying to open a half-melted plastic box.

“Is that a Porta-Potty?” I asked.

How had I never noticed that in his house before? I looked around and realized that we must be behind the door in the kitchen. I had always assumed it was a pantry, but I’d never looked inside.

“A Portal-Potty,” he corrected. He managed to pry it open, and then, with a surprising amount of strength and impoliteness, he shoved me inside it, pressing a piece of paper into my hand at the same time. I didn’t have time to look at it just then, as I was busy fretting about whether the contents of the toilet had spilled, since the Porta-Potty had capsized. Thankfully, the coast was clear.

Somewhere behind us, Finnigan roared.

“They’ll explain everything on the other side,” Mr. A. said. “Don’t worry about your mother.” Then he forced my head inside and slammed the door closed.

It occurred to me that if my life was in danger from rabid bloodhounds and creepy black shadow-ghosts, and my neighborhood wizard and his ficus/mutant gorilla weren’t enough to keep me safe, a Porta-Potty might not do the trick, either.25 I had just decided to open the door and point this out to him when I realized that I wasn’t bent over awkwardly in a fallen, half-melted Porta-Potty anymore. I was standing, quite naturally, in a perfectly normal, non-melted Porta-Potty. I glanced down at the door and saw that the lock was rotated shut. I turned it back, opened the door, and stepped into my destiny.

2. A Wizard’s Weight

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.

—Thomas Aquinas26

Okay, so that was super corny. Stepped into my destiny? Sorry about that. I did it so you would want to keep reading. It’s what writers call a hook. Much like a nasty, twisted death spear that nabs an unsuspecting fish, literary hooks snag your curiosity and make you want to keep reading instead of doing what you should be doing, like getting back to work, washing the dishes, going to bed, or taking that potty break you need so badly. Anyway, now that I don’t have to convince you to keep reading, let’s try this again.

I glanced down at the door and saw that the lock was rotated shut so that it read “Occupied.” I turned it back, opened the door, and stepped into France.

Yes, France.

You’d think that if you stepped suddenly into another country you’d be a little lost, but I knew exactly where I was; I’d been looking at a picture of this place in Mr. A.’s living room for years.

Twelve hundred years ago, a bishop named Auburt had a dream in which Michael the Archangel told him to build a church on a big rock in the ocean half a mile off the coast of Normandy. Over the next thousand years, his little church was built up into a huge castle city that served as a prison during the Hundred Years’ War. I knew all that, and I’d seen pictures, but that’s nothing compared to how cool Mont Saint-Michel looked in person.

I stepped away from the Portal-Potty, which stood on a paved path at the very edge of land. Before me, a half mile out, the castle city of Mont Saint-Michel stuck out of the waters of the English Channel like the fin of some enormous whale. Not far from where I stood, a concrete walkway had been constructed to connect the mainland with the island. This way, tourists could access the castle even when the tide came in and the sandbar was filled with water from the channel. On that day, the first bus of tourists must not have arrived yet, because there was no one around. The castle city was bathed in morning light, towers and walls were damp from the night’s rain and glinting in the sunrise. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought the fortress had pierced the surface of the North Atlantic moments before my arrival and risen out of the water full of sea ghosts or a band of Triton’s secret knights, all clad in fish-scale armor with whalebone spears bright as the city’s towers, gleaming and outstretched to touch the sky.

My thoughts were interrupted as the Portal-Potty from which I had just emerged banged open and a boy my own age stumbled out. I say boy, but at the time I wasn’t exactly sure what he was, except that his name was Drake. It said so on his T-shirt (“My name is Drake”). Right then, I knew he was a geek.

“Oh,” Drake said when he spotted me. “Greetings! My name is Drake. Have you just arrived as well?”

“Uh…” I was busy staring at Drake’s head, for while his body was that of a thin teenage boy, his head was furry and cow-like. He had short, stubby horns, ears that stuck out to the side, and a bovine snout that held up a pair of round glasses. Yep. Definitely a cow.

“I am a minotaur,” he said, reading my face. “Never seen one before?”

I shook my head.

Drake nodded knowingly. “You must be from one of the outer-rim planets. Gorgata? Dweel? Maybe Tarantus? Unless…” He stopped short, eyes narrowing. “You are not from here are you? I don’t mean to insult you, of course. I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to, but there have been rumors that one of this week’s wizards is an earthling.”

“I’m an American,” I said, a little offended.

He nodded slowly but was saved the trouble of responding as our Portal-Potty burst open for the third time that morning and the most beautiful girl in the world27 stepped out.

She had reddish-blonde hair in a long braid and eyes the color of the sea in a storm. At least, one of them was. Her other eye was brown. Come to think of it, Drake had two different colored eyes too. Blue and green.

“Greetings,” Drake began brightly. “My name is—”

“Drake?” she finished, eyeing his shirt. “So I gathered.” She shot me a glance. “And you?”28

“Simon,” I said.

Drake puffed up proudly. “He is an—”

“An earthling,” she said. “Duh. Well, I’m Tessa.” She stared at us as if daring us to contradict her, then said, “That’s all three of us, then. There were just supposed to be three, right? So where’s our guy?”

“Our guy?” I said, hoping that someone was about to explain what was going on.

“Our chaperone,” Drake corrected, adjusting his glasses. “I am sure he’ll be along soon.”

“He’s here now,” a deep voice said, and we all jumped. Drake sneezed violently and then apologized. “Sorry, I sneeze when I’m nervous…or excited…or startled…or—”

“Whatever,” the new boy cut in. He was older than us. Seventeenish, in a blue cloak and shining black boots. He looked us over and then grinned at me. “So it’s true, eh? An earthling! Been a few years since we’ve had one of those. Last one died before she made it to the school.29 Well, I’m Basil. Follow me.”

He turned and set off for the walled city at a brisk pace, leading us over the elevated walkway. As we walked, the others were silent, presumably because they knew what was going on. I was silent because I didn’t want everyone to realize how confused I was.30

When we arrived at the lower city gate, the doors stood open, and I could see a long, winding stone walkway bending upward between the overhanging rooftops of three-story medieval cottages and shops. To my surprise, Basil stopped outside the gate and closed the doors. Then he withdrew a small bronze medallion from under his shirt, where it hung like a necklace. He used it to knock once on the door, then replaced it and pulled the doors open again.

A fresh breeze hit us and I heard a crackling sound behind me, like water landing in hot oil. I turned in the direction of the noise and found the world completely changed. The walkway was gone, along with the coast, and apparently the whole country of France.31 In fact, unless I missed my mark, we weren’t on Earth at all anymore. The Mont Saint-Michel seemed pretty much the same, except that it was now surrounded by a sea of stars—literally an ocean of what looked like sparkling diamonds the size of soccer balls suspended in deep, black water that went on as far as the eye could see in every direction. Above us, the night sky was the soft red of a dying fire, and beyond it, impossibly close, I could see the distant swirling shapes and colors of an unfamiliar galaxy.

“Welcome to Skelligard,” Drake said, clapping me on the shoulder enthusiastically and drawing a deep breath of air. “I have dreamt of this moment my whole life.”

“Oy!” Basil exclaimed. “Earth kid, I almost forgot.” He looked me over and laughed. “I bet you think you’ve lost your mind!” His face grew serious. “You haven’t. No, don’t ask me any questions.”

My mouth, which had just opened, snapped shut.

“I’ll get you a guide, and you can badger him with your questions. There’s no time for it now. They’re waiting for you to be weighed.”

We followed him through the gate and met an old, hunch-backed man with a frizzy gray beard. He closed the door behind us and then moved to stand behind a large wooden cart, where I guessed he was stationed as some kind of door guard/receptionist.

“Evening, Daft,” Basil said. “Got the new students here.”

So this was a school of some sort. Good to know.

“Not students yet, are they?” Daft mumbled grumpily. He looked us over. “Guardians?”

Basil nudged Drake, who said proudly, “Nordwin Strong.” Daft jotted something down on a ledger.

Tessa said, “Ezrutaliel Muse.”

Everyone turned to look at me and I racked my brain for the name of a guardian I knew. “Batman?”

Basil shook his head. “Atticus Muse.”

Daft nodded and jotted it down, then looked up expectantly. “I’ll take your codes now.”

Drake stepped forward and handed Daft a slip of paper.

Tessa did the same, except that her “code” was written on a scroll of deep-red parchment.

Once again they turned to me. I shifted my weight nervously and tried not to look anyone in the eye. It wasn’t my fault that I had no idea what was going on. In fact, I still half expected that whatever Mr. A. had put in my drink was causing me to hallucinate this whole thing. I’d probably wake up any minute with a nasty headache and a decent court case…

Tessa grabbed my wrist and lifted it. “Is this it, dimwit? Right here in your hand?” I glanced at her and saw that she looked more amused than mean. Still, that was one of the first times in my life that someone had accused me of being dumb.

I looked at my hand and to my surprise, saw that it still gripped the piece of paper Mr. A. had pressed into it.

It was the note I had written on the penguin paper.

My code.

She pried it out of my fingers and handed it to Daft, who dropped all three codes into a slot in the top of the cart. There was a puff of smoke, as if they had just been incinerated.

“Come on, then,” Basil said and led us up the street.

Mont Saint-Michel (or Skelligard, or wherever we were) was your basic fairy-tale medieval walled city. Half-timbered houses, flower boxes in the windows, cobblestone roads, moss, bird droppings, walled-off gardens, giant castle in the middle, stone steps so old they were worn into the shape of a U, and so many stairs that just walking up the street made me wheeze like a geriatric32 rhinoceros.

I lost count of how many stairs we climbed and how many levels the city had. Suffice it to say that in Skelligard, the next street over was always above you as well.33 I don’t know how long it took us to get to the castle itself. All I remember is looking down at the quaint houses and gardens and winding stone stairs as we climbed, and out beyond them to the sea of stars, and beyond that to the red galactic sky, and thinking to myself that if I wasn’t experiencing a drug-induced hallucination, then I had stepped into a truly wondrous place.

I don’t even remember entering the castle for the first time—I think we went in by some sort of side entrance—but a few minutes later, there we were, in a large room with arching stone ceilings, the three of us arranged before a crowd of young faces. Basil had slipped away, presumably to fetch my guide.

Meanwhile, an extremely fat woman had entered the room, wheeling what looked like a large aluminum toolbox. Along with her came several older men and women. They wore capes like Basil, except they were black instead of blue. Most of them looked bored, as if they’d done this a hundred times before and would rather be doing something else.

The fat woman stopped in the middle of the room, right in front of the three of us, and kicked open the lid. The sides of the cart tipped down to reveal a strange mechanism, then split in two and folded several times Transformer-style, until a giant scale was rendered. Not a bathroom scale like the one next to your toilet; it was more like one of those fancy scales they have at the doctor’s office, except that instead of the sliding weights at the top, there was a big half-circle dial. The dial was divided into several sections, each a different color, and there was a long, spindly gold pointer.

The fat woman cleared her throat and the audience quieted. When she spoke, I almost laughed. She sounded like a goat! I wondered if she had swallowed one recently.34

“Listen well and listen all. I am the Categorical. These three teens will now be weighed, and their power before you laid.”

She held up a clipboard. “Drakus Domerson,” she said formally. Drake stepped forward and sneezed. She led him to the scale, and when he stepped onto it, the hand flipped back and forth on the dial. Once. Twice. Finally, it settled on a bright blue band.

“Drakus BRIGHT,” the woman said, making the word seem much longer than it was. There were several gasps from the crowd and a smattering of applause. Drake skipped back to us, pleased as punch.

It was at this moment that Basil reappeared at my side. He had his hands cupped before him, holding something. “Here you go, Simon. This is Chester.” He opened his hands to reveal a miniature gecko with wings. It was bright orange and the size of a thimble, but it was staring up at Basil with a look of such intense disapproval that I was unsurprised to see the older boy cower under its gaze. In contrast, it smiled quite warmly at me.

“Simon,” it said in a deep, opulent baritone voice, “I’m terribly sorry to have made you wait so long. This loathsome fool failed to notify me of your arrival.” He pointed at Basil, who shrugged and handed me the gecko.

“Tessa Launderson,” the Categorical called, and Tessa walked to the scale.

I glanced down at the gecko, who winked at me. “Set me on your shoulder, Simon, that I might speak in your ear.”

I did.

“My name is Chester,” the gecko said. “And I am not a gecko. I am a Daruvian shoe leech, but we can get to that later. For now, I will answer your questions.”

“What’s going on?” I said, just loud enough for my new guide to hear.

“You are at Skelligard, a distinguished magical university, and you are here because you are magical yourself. All wizards specialize in some type of power, which is determined through the weighing process that you are witnessing now. That boy was just identified as a Bright.”

“Is that strange?” I asked, thinking of how everyone had gasped.

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Minotaurs are notoriously dim. They are always Strongs. Or sometimes Clinks, but never—”

He was cut off, for the scale’s pointer had come to a stop. The Categorical announced, “Tessa STRONG!” There was an excited cheer from the other students, and a good deal of whispering.

“Very interesting,” Chester continued. “Female Strongs are quite rare. I do not remember the last time that—oh look, it is your turn now.”

I felt my stomach knot. Really, I had expected to wake up by now, and it was getting harder and harder to convince myself that I was dreaming—especially now that the scale had appeared; I was pretty sure that my subconscious wasn’t clever enough to make that up.

“Simon Jacobson.”

I moved as confidently as possible, despite the fact that I felt completely out of place.35 I stepped onto the scale and the students began to whisper. I guessed that they were gossiping about my being from Earth, which was apparently interesting.

I watched as the needle flopped from one side of the dial to the other, then back again. From this close, I could see that each colored section had writing on it, labeling different categories. From left to right, it read:

Strong, Quick, Bright, Seer, Muse, Clink.

The needle swung across the dial again and I held my breath. But nothing happened. The needle flew past “Clink,” knocked against a thick brass peg, and then flopped all the way back again, coming to rest on the peg to the left of “Strong.”

“Oh dear,” Chester said.

“What?” I whispered, wondering if I should feel embarrassed.

The Categorical’s pudgy pink hand came down on my shoulder like an anvil. “Step off, please.”

Once I was out of the way, she withdrew a small star-shaped screwdriver and went to work on the machine. She opened little doors here and there, mumbling under her breath. When she was satisfied, she stepped onto the scale herself and the needle flicked over to “Clink.”

“There you go,” she said. “Just a little hiccup, but I’ve fixed it.” She pushed me forward.

This time the needle didn’t even move.

Several of the students snickered. The Categorical grunted angrily. “You’re not standing on it properly,” she said with a huff, grabbing the collar of my shirt and jerking me backward. She stomped on the scale a few times to make sure it was moving freely. Then, to my horror (and the crowd’s delight), she picked me up like a toddler and planted me firmly in the center of the scale, pressing down on my shoulders with a delicacy befitting Godzilla.

The needle flicked to the right, flew off the face of the machine, and clattered across the stone floor. Meanwhile, the face of the dial cracked down the center. There was a sound beneath my feet like a giant stomach growling, and I had the good sense to hop off the scale.

The Categorical was not so lucky. She actually bent over the scale and looked down right as it exploded. The base of the scale knocked her out cold, then bounced up and down on a giant spring.

Several students gasped. Others applauded. Several of the adults I had noticed earlier now rushed to the fat woman’s aid. I assumed these were the teachers.

After a very confusing five minutes, during which Chester apologized profusely and explained that nothing like this had ever happened before, the Categorical was declared unbroken and given an ice pack for her face. A tired-looking man in his middle years held up his hands for silence and was instantly obeyed. Chester told me this was Gladstone, head of the school council and all-around top dog at Skelligard.

“Thank you,” he said in a soft voice. He turned to me. “And thank you, Simon. We’ve not had such entertainment during the weighing for at least a dozen years.”

I felt my face go red but forced myself into a charismatic bow. The crowd laughed.

“This leaves us with a bit of a problem, however,” Gladstone went on. “Madam Categorical, how long would it take you to retrieve another scale?”

“At least a week,” she snapped from behind her ice pack. “The other is with my associate in Drangon.”

Gladstone nodded. “That will not do at all.” He turned away from her and gestured to a frumpy-looking teacher. “Hawk?” he said. “We have an old scale down in Stores, do we not?”

Hawk nodded, but one of the other teachers, a sturdy man with a curly beard, gave a sharp laugh. “Old? Rector, that scale is nearly a thousand years old. It dates back to the founding.”

The Categorical spat a bit of blood on the floor. “I am familiar with such antique scales,” she grumbled. “It will almost certainly not work.”

Gladstone smiled kindly at her, the way a father smiles at a whining child. “Never hurts to try, of course,” he said smoothly. “Hawk, Percy, fetch it from the basement, would you? Dust it off and, eh…bring a little oil or something.”

The frumpy teacher and a strong-looking man left. Instantly the students burst into excited conversation. Gladstone smiled at me but said nothing. I wanted to ask him why the scale broke, but he was pulled away into a whispered conversation with another teacher before I got my chance.

After what seemed like ages, the two men returned. To my surprise, the larger one, Percy, carried the iron scale all by himself, slung over his shoulder like a massive tree stump. It must have weighed a ton, but nobody seemed to think this was out of the ordinary. He set it next to the broken scale, and when it hit the floor, a great cloud of dust rose into the air.

Gladstone coughed, waving away the dust. “Very good, very good,” he said. “Up you get, Madam Categorical. I daresay the thing needs a quick inspection.”

She looked over the machine with obvious competence, mumbling to herself. She tried her tool on some of the panels, but they wouldn’t open. “Rusted shut,” she said. She wiped the face of the dial with her sleeve and barked in surprise.

“What is it?” Gladstone said.

She gawked at him. “This dial still lists the seventh talent!” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen a scale so old! It’s terribly antiquated, I’m afraid…”

“Seventh talent?” I whispered, but Chester did not respond.

“But does it work?” Gladstone said impatiently.

She shrugged, then she stepped onto it and the needle quivered, then crept across the face to rest on “Clink.”

“Reads me okay,” she said reluctantly, stepping back off.

Gladstone gave me a nod. “Go on then, lad. Give it a whirl.”

I stepped onto the scale and saw that the dial was indeed split into seven sections instead of six. From left to right it read:

Strong, Quick, Bright, Seer, Muse, Clink, Fayter.

The needle swung slowly to the right and stopped dead center under the word “Fayter.”

The room went quiet as a tomb.

“Oh my,” Chester whispered.

“What?” I said, surprised at how loud my voice was in the hushed silence.

The sound of whispers rose like a tide. Suddenly people were pointing at me. Then I was being ushered out of the room at a brisk speed, Chester holding on to my shoulder to keep from being thrown. Gladstone pulled me up a staircase and into a small classroom, several teachers in tow. He let six or seven of them in and then shut the door before turning to me. He had penetrating eyes. One light gray. The other brilliant white.

“Be honest, Simon,” he said. “Of what just occurred, how much do you comprehend?”

“Pretty much none of it,” I admitted.

He darted a look at Chester, who held up his hands apologetically. “I was paired with him only moments ago, Rector.”

“Very well,” he said, sighing. “If I do not tell you, others will, and they may not get all the facts straight. There are six branches of magical specialization. Do you understand?”

I shrugged. He waved a hand. “You will. Earth has a secrecy policy that is incredibly strict and undeniably stupid. Otherwise, like your classmates, you would have grown up with the knowledge of this place, and of what you are. As it is, you’ll have to just…hit the ground running.” He made a sweeping gesture. “At any rate, upon entering the university, you are weighed to determine your specialization, your talent. Once, there were thought to be seven talents, but the idea was abandoned hundreds of years ago. In the whole history of wizards, you are only the second Fayter to have come among us.”

I blinked at him, taking in his bright eyes, his eager smile. The other teachers looked excited, too. Some happy, some wary, but all excited. I asked the obvious question: “Who was the first?”

Gladstone’s eyes twinkled. “Rellik the Seer,” he said. “He lived a thousand years ago. He was the founder of this university, the framer of the Circle of Eight, the hero of a thousand tales, and the most powerful wizard who ever lived.”

3. Unbroken

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

—Abraham Lincoln36

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this is going to be another one of those stories where a boy goes to a magical, castley37 wizard school and spends many years (and books) discovering its ancient secrets and becoming an all-powerful megadude.38 Let me make this clear: That’s NOT what happens in this book.

Don’t get me wrong; I love that type of story. They are, by and large, better and happier than this one. I wish I could have stayed at Skelligard for years. I think I would have been happy there. I might have even learned how to be a proper wizard. But I’m too unlucky for predictable plots and fairy-tale endings. The truth is, I was at school for barely a day (a couple more chapters) before I got broadsided by a little thing called destiny (there’s that D word again). After that, I only came back when I needed to steal something or stock up on snacks.

The rest of that day was pretty epic. They told me that my guardian, Atticus Muse (aka Mr. A.), had arrived with my mom and that she would be staying in the city. I was expected to board with the students, specifically my class, with whom I would do everything. We would eat together, study together, room together, and eventually graduate together. For now, we were supposed to be “clothed, shod, and admitted.” Whatever that meant. I hoped it had nothing to do with horseshoes or an insane asylum.

Back outside, my class turned out to be just Drake and Tessa. The teachers left us there, on a little cobblestone street outside the school, with only Chester to guide us, and since we had all parted rather suddenly earlier, we took a moment to regroup. For her part, Tessa was entirely unimpressed with my mysterious new claim to fame. Meanwhile, Drake was beside himself.

“And then, WHAM! The scale hit her right in the face.” He whirled dramatically, nearly goring Tessa’s left eye out with one of his horns. She smacked him on the back of the head. “Ouch. Anyway, I can’t believe you’re a Fayter. Dad’s never going to believe this.”

We were walking down one of Skelligard’s numerous winding staircases, moving from one level of the city to another beneath the red sky. I was walking in front, only because Chester knew where to go.

“Left here,” he said from my shoulder. “Down those stairs by the reflecting pool.”

As we walked, I told them that this whole Fayter thing was probably a big mistake. They’d bring the other scale, reweigh me, and find out I’m normal as can be. Tessa agreed. Drake was skeptical.

“So we’re getting clothed and shod?” I said to change the subject.

“Yep,” Drake said. “Wizard boots and a wizard cloak. I’ve heard you have to sing a song and the boots that were made for you start dancing to it, and that’s how you find the right ones.”

“That’s a bunch of hooey,” Tessa said flatly.

“What’s so important about these boots?” I asked.

“They are a traditional part of the wizard’s wardrobe,” Chester explained.

“And they have special powers,” Drake added.

“They also keep your feet warm,” Tessa finished, rolling her eyes.

Chester led us into what looked like a tiny stone broomshed built into the side of a wall. Like many buildings in Skelligard’s city, appearances were deceiving: It was a spacious underground cobbler’s shop with shelves upon shelves of boots lining the walls. As soon as we were inside, Chester hopped onto the long wooden workbench and announced us.

“The new class, Master Burgess.”

An old man wearing three pairs of glasses peered up at us, then got to his feet and wiped his hands on a pair of grimy leather overalls. “Pleased to meet you,” he said through the corner of his mouth (he was chewing on a toothpick). “Burgess Clink’s my name. Who might you be?”

“Tessa Strong,” Tessa said.

“Drake Bright,” Drake said.

They all looked at me. “Simon Fayter,” I said. It was the first time anyone had said it aloud.

Burgess inhaled his toothpick. “Agck! What?”

It took several minutes for Chester to talk Burgess down from his excitement and convince him to show us some boots. Eventually he led Tessa around the room, instructing her to walk slowly past the shelves. To my surprise, a pair of boots hopped off a low shelf and shuffled over to her almost at once.

“Great gollywobbles, that was fast, girl,” Burgess said, snapping them up. “Burgundy calfskin. Couldn’t ask for a nicer pair. Magical properties?” He examined the bottom of the boot, pressed his ear to the opening at the top, and then, to Tessa’s dismay, licked the toe. “Yes,” he said to himself. “Waterproof. Never needs cleaning. Always keeps your feet the perfect temperature. And…” He leaned in and whispered something in her ear. Then he slipped them on her feet and she grinned.

“They’re perfect,” she said.

Burgess sniffed. “Course they are. Came to you, didn’t they?”

Drake was next. He walked the whole room twice without success before finally picking up a pair that he thought looked nice.

“No, no,” Burgess said, reaching out, but the boots had already slipped out of Drake’s hands and trotted away from him.

“Don’t get many minotaurs in here,” Burgess admitted apologetically. “Only have a half dozen or so at the school. But they often take to steer hide.” He brought out a large box from beneath the counter and no sooner had he removed the lid than a pair of shining black boots started tapping their toes in Drake’s direction.

“Excellent,” Burgess said, handing them over. “Magical properties: Untrippable. Also, completely impervious to troll dung.”

Drake laughed and Burgess gave him a disapproving look. “Don’t jest, boy. Many a wizard has been finished off by stepping in a pile of troll dung in the dark.” He snapped his fingers dramatically.

He turned to me next. “Now to find the Fayter’s fated footwear.” He chuckled at his own joke. At his direction, I walked around the room twice, then a third time, then a fourth. He took all the boxes out from beneath the counter, to no avail, and then frowned. “I suppose I could see what I have in the back.”

At his words, there was a thump near the rear of the room. We all looked at the back door. At first I thought the sound must be coming from behind it, but when the second thump came, it was from inside a locked cabinet in the corner.

“Holy soles!” Burgess exclaimed. “Then again, I suppose it fits…” He unlocked the cabinet with a key from his belt and withdrew a very battered pair of gray traveling boots.

“Are those Deft Steppers?” Drake said. “My dad’s got a pair like that.”

Burgess shook his head. “No one has a pair like this, son.”

“Used, eh?” Tessa said, taking in their shabby appearance.

“Used?” Burgess snapped. “Used? Yes, used. These were the boots of Rellik the Seer!”

Drake gasped.

Burgess gave Drake an approving nod, then handed them over to me.

“Uh, thanks,” I said, summoning all the gratitude I could muster. They looked like they had been gnawed on by hungry rats. Or possibly digested by a hippo. “Do they…do anything?”

Burgess gave me a look of utter disbelief. “Ain’t you ever heard of Rellik’s boots?”

Drake nodded vigorously beside me. “They walk in silence,” he said almost reverently. “Over water, through fire, above the wind, and uh…” He furrowed his brow in frustration.

“And out of time,” Tessa finished quietly. She was looking at me as if she hadn’t seen me properly before now.

“See?” Burgess said, still eyeing me a little suspiciously. “Everybody knows. Well, go ahead, then. Put them on.”

They fit me like a glove.39 As soon as he saw this, he waved us away.

“Get out of here! I’ve got to close up and go tell the Rector I’ve just given away one of the most valuable treasures of Skelligard.” He showed us back out, still mumbling to himself. “Fayter. A Fayter! Rellik’s boots…Great gollywobbles…”

Back outside, my feet made no sound whatsoever on the cobblestone street. “I guess you guys weren’t kidding about that ‘walk in silence’ bit,” I mused.

“I guess you were wrong about the scale making a mistake,” Drake returned. “I mean, Rellik’s boots? Only a Fayter could pull off something like that.”

The truth was, I had been thinking exactly the same thing. A broken-down old scale was one thing, but the boots seemed to make it official. I was a wizard. Not only that, I was a Fayter. And there had only been one other Fayter. Ever. And now I was wearing his boots. I shivered, even though it was warm. In a matter of hours, I’d been snatched out of my life and thrust into another world, another story, and now this mysterious figure from the past seemed to be reaching out to me for some reason. Rellik…

“Here we are,” Chester announced. “The cloakroom.”

From the outside, it looked like a large house had been attached to a long line of tin-roofed workshops. Inside, it was lavishly furnished with draperies, paintings, and a smattering of comfortable furniture. In the center of the room sat a little pedestal surrounded by mirrors.

When we entered, a kind-faced blonde woman in her middle years came through a door at the back and motioned to us. I didn’t recognize her from the weighing, but there was something teacherly40 about her, and I guessed that she was some sort of instructor.

“Welcome,” she said ceremoniously. “What do you seek from the Muses?”

Drake bounced up and down on his heels. “Dad told me how this part works,” he confided to me under his breath. Then he said more loudly, “We seek what they have seen fit to make.”

“That is wise,” the woman said.

Apparently that was the end of the ceremony, for she gave a little laugh and shook our hands, introducing herself as Shea Muse. Then she got out three notecards and held a pen ready. “Names, please.”

We gave our names again.

“Simon what?” she said, much more politely than Burgess had done.

“Fayter,” Drake said.

“We’re not joking,” Tessa added.

I turned to look at my friends, surprised.41

She looked from him to me, and then to Chester, who gave a little nod.

“Very well,” she said slowly, writing my name down. She rang a little bell and a young woman entered through the back door.

“Three new cloaks, please, Sydney.”

The girl disappeared again, and Shea sat down on a chair in the corner, inviting us to take seats as well.

After a minute of silence, Drake said, “Is it true you make the cloaks special for each of us?”

Shea smiled. “That’s right. A Muse’s magic is unlocked by artistic expression. I draw. Sydney dances. I draw a cloak, and by the time I am done, there is always a name in the picture somewhere, hidden in a hem or a piece of lace. Usually I don’t even notice when I’m drawing the name, but it’s always there. Then the cloak is sewn and placed in holding until the wizard appears to claim it. This is how the cloaks have always been made. We have cloaks here that will probably not be claimed for many years, and some that are hundreds of years old already, fashioned by Muses who worked here before I was born.”

The girl bustled back through the door with two packages wrapped in brown paper and twine. Shea whispered a question to the younger girl, who disappeared again. Then she untied the first package and beckoned to Tessa.

“Ladies first,” she said, and Tessa moved to stand on the little pedestal. Shea unfurled a cloak of deep oxblood wool and draped it across Tessa’s shoulders.

“This one was fashioned ninety years ago by my predecessor,” Shea said.

“Thank you,” Tessa said. She took a spin in front of the mirrors before returning to my side.

Shea unwrapped the next package and unfolded a deep-blue cloak. “This one I made myself,” she said. “It is yours, Drake.”

Drake donned it eagerly. “It doesn’t have any sleeves,” he said.

“That’s right. Cloaks fashioned for minotaurs are often sleeveless, so that when you have your kulraka, it will still fit. Even the neck size is adjustable.”

I saw Drake blush beneath the fine fur on his cheeks as she showed him how to change it with a series of buttons.

Just then Sydney reappeared, empty-handed as before, and whispered something to Shea before leaving again.

Shea turned to me next. “Simon, when I heard your name today I was surprised, because I know the names that belong to every cloak in our keeping, and yours is not among them. We have never failed to clothe a student before, so this situation is new to me…”

I shuffled my feet. “Well,” I said, trying to break the awkward silence, “there’s a first time for everything.”

She gave a hearty chuckle. “I suppose so. I could make you a cloak if that is your wish, but now that I have seen you, it would not be a true, predestinated wizard’s cloak.”

I looked at Drake and Tessa, who shrugged.

“If I may be so bold,” she went on, “I would urge you to wait. We have never had a Fayter at this school before, so you may find that your cloak finds you in some other way. One of my students might stumble onto a forgotten parcel with your name on it, or you might be cleaning an old locker and find it hanging inside. Best not to force things like this.” She gave me a kind smile.

“Right,” I said, feeling anything but reassured. Perhaps I had been too quick to assume that I was something special.

Back in the street, Chester rubbed his tiny green hands together and eyed the red sky. “It appears to be nearly time for your admissions interviews,” he said, and he began steering us back toward the main campus. We had descended several flights of stairs in our trek, and now the dark towers of the university complex loomed above us.

“What’s the point of an interview?” I asked nervously. I’d never failed a test before, but unlike now, I’d always been able to prepare for it. “We already had the weighing, right?”

“Ah,” Chester said, “but that is only the first half of the entrance process. Now you must be questioned by the school council and paired with a sponsor.”

“A sponsor?”

“Someone to look out for you. Be responsible for you. Typically it’s one of the council members, but any of the teachers can do it.”

“When my dad graduated,” Drake said proudly, “his sponsor helped him get a job researching sky squids on Kantor Five.” He tossed his cloak with a flourish.

“Drake,” I said, “what did Shea mean when she said you couldn’t have sleeves?”

Drake blushed again. “She meant the kulraka,” he mumbled. Then he scowled and said with surprising fierceness, “I wish it would come sooner. I’m always late with everything.”

Tessa hid a snicker.

“I don’t get it,” I admitted.

“Puberty,” Tessa said. “The kulraka is the minotaur growth spurt. Someday our little Drake here will be—”

She was cut off as a hulking form came around the corner. It was a young man, so to speak, probably twenty or so. He had a bull’s head like Drake, but his face was covered in thick fur instead of wispy hair, and his shoulders were broad—nearly twice as wide as a normal man. He stood well over seven feet tall. His horns were great, curving lances as long as my arm. We had to move aside to let him pass.

“That,” Drake finished longingly. “Someday, I’ll be that.

“Ha!” the big minotaur growled. “Dream on, Hairless.”

Drake scowled. “That is so distasteful. He’s from the Golgoth Clan, the most feared and disgusting warriors of our people. It’s minotaurs like him that give us a bad name.”

“Do you have a bad name?” I asked. “Minotaurs, I mean?”

Tessa laughed. “You really don’t know anything, do you, Dimwit?” She draped an arm across my shoulder. “Don’t worry. Drake and I will set you straight.”

Normally I wouldn’t stand for anyone calling me names, but Tessa did it with such affection in her voice that it was almost a term of endearment. I grinned. I was sure they would teach me a few things. If I made it through admissions, that is.

There was a surprise waiting for me in the courtyard outside the main hall.

“Mom!” I exclaimed, running to give her a hug. Atticus and Finnigan were there as well. They told me that my mom would be staying in Skelligard until they could determine whether it was safe for her to return to Earth. For some reason, Drake and Tessa were very shy around Atticus, but at my urging, they showed off their new boots and cloaks. I was surprised to learn that rumor had already reached Atticus about my boots.

“Atticus knew you’d be different,” Finnigan said, tapping the wizard’s shoulder firmly. “A Fayter. Couldn’t believe it when I heard. And Rellik’s boots!”

We talked for a while longer, and then Atticus took my mom and Finnigan away so that we could “ready ourselves.” Whatever that meant.

If it meant stand around chatting and feeling nervous, we did a good job.

“Why were you guys so weird around Atticus?” I asked, forcing myself to use his real name for the first time.

“I wasn’t weird,” Drake protested. “Well, maybe a little, but I mean, come on. He’s a knight of the Circle! First one I’ve ever met. I can’t believe he was actually your guardian. Imagine! A knight of the circle being your guardian. They usually just oversee the guardian program. Why do you suppose you get such special treatment?”

“I dunno,” I said with a shrug. “Cuz I’m awesome?”

Tessa snorted, then blew me a raspberry. “I doubt that’s it. But don’t feel too bad. Drake’s just jealous that you’ve been hanging out with a knight of the Circle for years and he’s never even met one. I, on the other hand, met Soren Clink just last year.”

“You met Lady Soren?” Drake said enviously.

“So,” I began, “who exactly are these Circle knights?”

Drake turned on me. “They’re not ‘Circle knights.’ They’re ‘knights of the Circle,’ or ‘one of the Eight,’ okay?”

“Right,” Tessa said, realizing my ignorance. “Well, there’s this thing called the Circle of Eight. Eight knights. I mean, they’re wizards—the most powerful wizards in the world—but they’re knights, too. At least they call them knights. I’m not sure why…”

Tessa made a face, and Drake took over seamlessly. “It’s because they have swords. And they travel all over the world in the blink of an eye. Like that!” He snapped his fingers. “They have special missions and stuff. Most of them are secret, so we don’t really hear about them. But if you ever see a knight of the Circle, you know something’s up…” He waved his hand mysteriously and I almost laughed.

“Mr. A.?” I said thoughtfully, still struggling to think of him in this new light. “I have a hard time believing he’s some sort of megadude.”42

“Well, he is,” Drake said. “He’s second of eight in the Circle. Gladstone’s first, of course.” He counted them off on his fingers. “Then there’s Atticus, Soren, Martaes, Braccus, Tinnay, and…”

“Hawk,” Chester finished.

“Oh, that’s right. Hawk. I always forget about him.”

“People always do,” Chester murmured.

“Half of them are women,” Tessa pointed out randomly.

“You can’t have half of seven,” Drake protested. “Three of them are women.”

“Perhaps she thinks that one of them is half woman,” a quiet voice said.

We all jumped. Drake sneezed. The slender, frumpy-looking teacher I had seen at the weighing was standing behind us, watching Tessa with interest. His robes were far too big for him and had a mangled look, as though he had tried to trim them down to size with a pair of garden shears; he’d done it too high, and you could see a sliver of hairy leg above his boots.

He leaned in and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “You don’t think it’s me, do you?” Up close, his eyes were gray and sharp, with little yellow specs in the center, like a hawk’s eyes.

“I…” Tessa began, then stopped, looking mortified. A second later, I realized why. Gladstone had called him Hawk. The Hawk. From the Circle of Eight!

Hawk did not relax his gaze. “Because if anyone is half woman, it’s Atticus.” He stroked an imaginary mustache. “He’s the only one pretty enough. Plus, I heard he taught that dugar of his how to knit.”

Without another word, Hawk turned on his heel and disappeared into the building we were waiting to enter.

“Wow,” Drake said.

“Yeah, Tessa,” I said. “Not even an official student yet and you’re already offending the teachers.”

“I…” Tessa began again, but she stopped as Drake and I snorted with laughter.

She punched each of us. “Do you think he was serious?”

Drake shrugged. Even Chester admitted that he couldn’t be sure. All he would say was: “Master Hawk is a mystery to everyone.”

Just then, a boy opened the door and called for Tessa to enter. That left Drake and I alone in the courtyard.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“No. You?”

“No.”

We both were, of course, and we both knew it.

“You only listed seven names,” I said to break the silence.

“What?”

“When you were talking about the Circle of Eight. You only listed seven names.”

“Oh,” Drake said. “Yes. There were eight, but now there’s seven.” He lowered his voice. “Bartholomew was killed.” He squinted thoughtfully. “Thirteen years ago? Murdered by the Jackal himself.” He shivered. “Don’t make me talk about that right now. I’ll get all jittery.”

I nodded.

We sat there for what seemed like an age. I could tell Drake was getting more nervous, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make him feel better. Finally, the boy reappeared at the door and took Drake inside.

Then it was just me and Chester. “What will it be like in there?” I asked him.

“The process is a bit different for everyone,” he said. “But it’s nothing to fret over. You’re not a student yet, so they won’t ask you any difficult questions. They just want to get to know you.”

For the next fifteen minutes, I tried not to fret. It made me nervous that neither Tessa nor Drake had come back out. Was that a good sign? I was about to ask Chester when the door opened. My turn had come. I was nervous, to be sure, but I was destined for this, right? I was Simon Fayter. So when the boy called my name, I put on my game face.

Gladstone sat between five other teachers, all lounging in their dark cloaks behind a long table. Atticus was there, too, for some reason, standing beside the table. They reminded me of ants on a log.43

Gladstone introduced himself and the others: Gladstone, Master Seer (we’ve met him already); Ioden, Master Bright (dark haired and surly); Hawk, Master Quick (eyes like his name, frumpy, as I said before); Boris, Master Clink (built like an ox fed on fast food and doughnuts); Percy, Master Strong (pretty boy/Greek god, the guy who carried that scale on his shoulder); and Shea, Master Muse (you just met her).

“We hereby commence the admissions interview for Simon Fayter,” Gladstone said when he had finished the introductions.

“Wait a minute,” the surly teacher interrupted.

“What is it, Master Bright?”

“How do we know he is a Fayter? I, for one, don’t trust that old heap of a scale.”

“Shut up, Ioden,” Hawk said calmly. “Boy’s obviously a Fayter. Look at him.”

I felt everyone’s eyes on me again and did my best not to squirm.

“Hmm,” Gladstone said thoughtfully. “I suppose we can reweigh him when the opportunity arises.” He cleared his throat. “We hereby commence the admissions interview for Simon Jacobson, presumed Simon Fayter.”

Gladstone explained that everyone would get a chance to question me, and then someone could choose to be my sponsor. Master Ioden would go first.

I gulped. He looked mean, but I forced on my best confident smile.

“Multiply nine by four thousand and one, then divide by the number of your toenails,” Master Ioden said.

It reminded me of the ridiculous math problems Atticus used to ask me. “Do hangnails count?” I asked reflexively. (I had one.)

“Certainly.”

“Three thousand, two hundred and seventy-three and a half,” I said.44

Ioden glowered. I wondered if he was trying to make me look bad. “How many hairs are there on your left arm?”

“Uh,” I said, taken aback. I glanced down. There had to be at least two or three thousand. “You mean approximately?”

Ioden frowned. “I mean exactly,” he snapped. “If I had wanted an approximation, I would have asked for one.”

“I don’t know, Grumpy Pants.” I didn’t say that last part out loud, but judging by the scowl he leveled at me, you’d think I had.

Luckily, he waved his hand in dismissal. “Master Clink.”

The thick-looking man was next. “Can you do a handstand?” he asked seriously.

“No,” I admitted.

“Good,” he growled. “I don’t approve of boys who waste their time with frivolous pursuits.” He waved a hand. “Master Muse.”

Shea turned her warm smile on me and I relaxed. “What artistic abilities do you possess?”

The question caught me off guard, and she could tell. “Do you draw, perhaps? Do you rhyme or tell stories?”

I was a pretty good liar, but I was pretty sure that’s not what she meant by telling stories. “I took piano lessons for a couple years,” I said. I didn’t mention that my mom had forced me to.

“This is a type of Earth instrument?” she asked.

“A mechanical hammer-harp,” Boris clarified.

“I see.” She tilted her head. “Thank you. Master Strong?”

The handsome man gave me a serious look. “Kneel down with both knees on the ground,” he said.

Wondering what was coming, I did as he asked.

“Now jump as high as you can.”

With some effort, I jumped just high enough to get my feet beneath me and stand up.

“Fine,” he said, clearly unimpressed. “Master Quick.”

The hawk-eyed man turned his sharp eyes on me. “No questions,” he said.

Gladstone cleared his throat.

“What?” Hawk said. “I already know I’m not going to sponsor him. The boy’s a Fayter. What would I teach him?”

Gladstone gave him a stern look and Hawk rolled his eyes. “Oh, very well,” he said. Then he jerked in his chair, thrusting an accusatory finger at me. “Can you pick my pocket, boy?”

“Sure,” I said without thinking. I nearly put a hole in my tongue trying to bite off the word. Those strange eyes of his had drawn the hasty answer out of me.

“I thought so,” he said, relaxing back into his chair. “Master Seer.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, wanting to protest. It had been Mr. A. who taught me to pick a pocket. It was a part of a series of random lessons he had called “applied desperation,” along with rock climbing, lock picking, flirting (super awkward), counting cards, and juggling.

Gladstone tapped the table thoughtfully and said, “Tell me what it was like when you broke.”

“When I what?” I asked, searching my mind wildly. The term sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“When Atticus connected you to the celestial lamben,” he explained. “And your power broke through. What was it like?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, the bar sort of changed temperature. It went hot, then cold, and then…”

“Yes?” Gladstone prompted.

“Then the box blew up.”

He blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“Ah.” The new voice made us all turn. Atticus was holding up his hand. “This is why I requested to attend the admissions, Rector.”

“Atticus,” Gladstone said sharply, “what is the boy talking about?”

“The lamben cage disintegrated. At the exact moment that I activated it.”

There were several exclamations of surprise.

“It’s not unheard of,” Atticus went on over the noise. “It happens from time to time.”

“From time to time? One case in fifteen thousand,” Boris said in disbelief. “I’ve never actually heard of an incident.”

“Wait a minute,” Ioden cut in. “Has the boy really even broken, Atticus? How do we know? You do know your job, don’t you, Atticus? You’re supposed to bring us broken wizards to train, not unbroken freaks of nature. Then again, I guess I’m not surprised.”

Atticus went slightly red in the cheeks, a thing which I had never seen him do. “I’ll not be lectured by you about what I am supposed to do,” he said, his voice shaking with rage. “You, who were so lax in your own duties that you handed your ward to the Jackal without so much as a fight.”

Ioden rose to his feet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouted. “I couldn’t possibly have saved that girl.”

“That girl,” Atticus said coldly, “is named McKenzie…if she is still alive.”

“That’s quite enough, you two,” Gladstone said sharply. “We will comport ourselves with civility, if only in this room.” He cleared his throat. “Master Bright does raise a serious question. Has the boy broken?”

Atticus raised a hand. “I am confident he has. The scale measured him, didn’t it? That should be proof enough for anyone.”

“Not necessarily,” Ioden countered. “Unbroken students have been weighed before. Not often, and not recently, but it is not unprecedented.”

“And were these students admitted?” Percy asked.

I thanked him silently, as I had been hoping somebody would ask this.

Ioden shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“Were they admitted or not, Master Bright?” Gladstone said sharply.

Ioden gave an irritated sigh. “Usually.”

“Very well,” Gladstone said. “I move that Simon Fayter be admitted to Skelligard. All in favor?”

All hands—except Ioden’s—went up.

“He is admitted,” Gladstone said. “Now, who will sponsor him?”

No one raised their hand.

“Anyone?” Gladstone said. “Master Muse?”

Shea shook her head.

Gladstone sighed. “Very well. We shall all take this evening to reflect on the case. Each of you is to reconsider your position and give me an answer in the morning. I encourage you to sponsor him. Meeting adjourned.”

I left the hall quietly, wondering if anyone would.

“Is it true you haven’t broken yet?”

Somehow Drake and Tessa had heard about the outcome of my interview before I found them. We were at “mess,” which is wizard talk for a giant room full of food. It was like the biggest all-you-can-eat buffet you’ve ever seen. I didn’t recognize most of the food, but they did have pizza and mac and cheese, so I couldn’t complain.

“Well, is it true?” Drake repeated.

“I guess,” I said through a mouthful of something strange. I had thought it was pudding but it turned out to be made from a minotaurian vegetable called—I kid you not—kakapoopadunga.45

“You’d know if you did,” Tessa said smugly.

“Yeah,” Drake said. “When you break, it feels like you’ve grown a new arm. An arm you don’t know how to use, but it’s there…No, that’s a bad analogy. It feels like when your horns start growing out. Wait, you don’t have horns.” His brow furrowed. “It feels like you’ve been constipated your whole life—without knowing it—and then suddenly…” He made a flourishing gesture.

“Ick,” Tessa said. “Some of us are trying to eat. When I broke, it felt like hearing my own name for the first time. Like music, late at night, under the stars.”

“I like her version better,” I said, and we all laughed.

“I heard there was a fight during your admissions,” Tessa said to me.

“There was. Atticus and Ioden really got into it. I didn’t really understand much, but they mentioned someone named McKenzie.”

Drake nodded. “That would be the girl that Ioden lost. He was working for the Circle of Eight for a while. I heard he wanted to join the Circle. But then he lost the girl he was guarding, and they told him he could kiss his dreams of being a knight goodbye.” Drake frowned. “Actually, I think it was an earthling he was guarding.”

“And they got her?” I said.

Drake nodded darkly. “Bloodhounds dragged her away, right under Ioden’s nose.”

I stared at my pudding. I wanted to ask more about the bloodhounds, and Atticus, and everything, but it hardly seemed the time.

“Are you going to eat your kakapoopadunga?” Drake asked hopefully.

I pushed it across the table. “Knock yourself out.”

After dinner, we visited my mom at the little inn where she was staying. We recounted our stories of the day in rich, glorious detail and then bid her good night. Before sunset, we were to make our way to what I guessed was some sort of dorm where the students slept. I wasn’t completely sure what kind of a dorm it was, because everyone kept referring to it as “Fluff.”

When I saw it, I was even more confused. Behind the main campus, high atop the mountain, beyond the stone walls, lay a gigantic fluffy mass. It was like a strange cross between a forested hill and a child’s plushy stuffed animal, magically enlarged so that it was a quarter of a mile across. The trees that covered its surface stood about ten feet high, but were not really trees at all, more like soft wooden tentacles swaying to the sound of the tide far below.

“What is that?” I asked incredulously.

“That, is Fluff,” Drake said unhelpfully.

“Fluff is a titan,” Chester explained, “which is what wizards call something very powerful and dangerous when they don’t know what it really is. Scientists classify it as Feliformia gargantia, or a free-forming terraglot, which means that it is something between an animal and a mobile landmass. Whatever it is, it is undeniably alive.”

“Alive?” I asked, taken aback.

“Oh, yes,” Chester went on. “Alive and highly intelligent, though it does not talk or see as far as we know…All we’re truly sure of is that it was brought here by Rellik before the founding of the school. And that it is very protective of the students.”

“Right,” I said. “Why don’t we just sleep in the school? There must be room.” I glanced back at the towers and peaks of the university, most of which were slightly below us now.

“Are you kidding?” Drake said. “I wouldn’t go in there at night for the biggest horns in all the world.” Even Tessa laughed.

“Why?”

“Cause it’s haunted!” Drake exclaimed. “Wizards have lived there for a thousand years, brought things back—monsters, demons! There’s no telling what goes on inside after the sun goes down. I mean, they burn the Midnight Blue in there even during the day. Haven’t you noticed?”

“The midnight what?” I said, trying to keep up.

“He is referring to the magical blue fire that is used to light the castle,” Chester said patiently. “It wards off demons, among other things.”

“Right,” I said, trying not to look at the castle now. The sun had nearly set, and it was eerie to think of the place filling with nightmarish creatures.

Chester told us how to approach Fluff, and then explained that he would be returning to the tutors guild for the night and that I could find him there in the morning if I required his services.

When he was gone, we approached a stumpy mound on the edge of Fluff, which Chester said was the head. We stood shoulder to shoulder and spoke our names aloud. For a moment, nothing happened. Then several of the tentacle-trees46 parted, bending away to form a path, and we stepped onto it.

The tentreecles kept bending away before us, and I realized that Fluff must be guiding us somewhere specific. I touched one of them curiously (it felt like warm rubber) and it slapped me in the face.

“I don’t think she likes to be touched,” Tessa said.

“Thanks. Got that.”

“Why do you assume it’s a she?” Drake said.

“Are you serious? It’s soft and mysterious, and intuitive, and protective, and keeps kids warm at night. You think it’s a guy?”

“Fine,” he said. “You win.”

“Get used to it. It’s going to happen a lot.”

I listened to them bicker pleasantly as we walked. I had expected to see a lot of students, but we only caught sight of people once or twice through the tentreecles, and we never heard voices. The path twisted and turned several times and I imagined us walking around little camps of students hidden away in their own private Fluff-groves.

Finally, the tentreecles gave way to a little clearing that was open to the night sky. I say clearing, but that hardly describes it; the place was like a tiny open-air home. There were three raised beds, two comfortable-looking sofas, a kitchen table, a couple empty bookcases, and a walled-off pool for bathing. One of the beds had a privacy wall around it (“That one’s mine,” Tessa said.). Everything was made of the same purple rubbery substance as the tentreecles.

“Impressive.” I had been imagining us camped out in little tents between tentreecles, but this was way better.

“Won’t we get cold?” Tessa said, trying out one of the sofas.

Drake shook his head, pressing his palm against one of the beds. “It’s warm. Everything is warm. I think this purple stuff is Fluff’s skin, and it’s her body heat that keeps us warm.”

“Eww,” Tessa said, wrinkling her nose. “We’re like bugs.”

Drake shrugged. “Just a theory. Like Chester said, we don’t really know what Fluff is. Anyway, what happened to your Mother Fluff attitude?”

“That was before I realized that we were parasites.”

Drake laughed and something silver tumbled from beneath his shirt.

“Nice necklace,” I teased. “Very manly.”

Drake glanced down at it. “My Aquarius? Everyone wears them.”

“I don’t,” I pointed out.

“Well, everyone who is a minotaur,” Drake amended.

“What for?”

“It’s our religion,” Drake explained, showing me his necklace. It was a simple silver fish pendant.

“You worship a fish?” I said slowly.

Drake nodded. “Her name is Scayla.”

I laughed. Not just at the name, but at the fact that a race of violent cow-men chose a fish as their god.

Drake went slightly red in the face. “Look,” he said, “she saved our whole race, okay? The last minotaur cubs alive after the Great Purge were starving on a riverbank. Scayla, first among fishes, brought them bugs and berries to eat. She saved their lives!”

“Got it,” I said in a soothing tone. “I didn’t mean to make fun of your religion. Just settle down, okay?”

Drake sat down at the table and got out some paper, still eyeing me darkly. I guessed that he was writing to his dad about all of the things he wouldn’t believe.

I thought about taking a bath, then tried out one of the beds instead. It was surprisingly comfortable, so I stretched out and flipped open my DS.

“One of the kids at dinner said they haven’t admitted an unbroken student to Skelligard in a hundred years,” Tessa mentioned casually.

“Well,” I said, “they still haven’t admitted me, technically.”

“Think they will?” Drake asked.

“Course they will,” Tessa said. “Have to, don’t they? He’s a Fayter.”

“But who would sponsor him?” Drake countered. “Not Boris. He only ever sponsors Clinks.”

“Not Percy, either,” Tessa said. “He sponsored me, and they usually don’t do two in one class, do they?”

“I bet Gladstone would, if the Rector was allowed to sponsor new students,” Drake said. “Gladstone likes him.”

“Yeah,” Tessa agreed. “Too bad. Maybe Ioden?”

“Nope,” I said. “He definitely doesn’t like me.”

I listened to them talk about it into the night. Eventually I shut off Mario Kart and rolled over. I let them think I had drifted off to sleep47 and then listened to them talk more openly. They spoke about me for a while. Drake was sure I was a Fayter, and I was surprised to learn that Tessa was pretty sure as well. Tessa also thought that I was afraid, which is obviously a giant load of nincompoopery. After that, they discussed their own misgivings. Tessa was nervous to be a Strong, since she was a girl. Drake was afraid to be a Bright, because he was a minotaur.

Meanwhile, I was feeling more out of place than either of them: a wizard with no power. Broken, ironically, because I was unbroken. And in that moment, with the warmth of Fluff beneath me, the voices of new friends in my ears, and the promise of a great adventure ahead, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be unbroken for long. Whatever it took, whatever it meant, I would find a way to break.

4. The Cabinet of Curiosities

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

—Albert Einstein48

The next morning, a mousy-haired boy woke me and Drake up just after dawn. Tessa was already gone, since she had an early morning class for Strongs only.

“Hawk wants you in Stores,” he said to me, then bounded away through Fluff.

“Aha!” Drake sang, leaping out of bed with enthusiasm and slamming his glasses onto his nose. “You got your sponsor after all.”

“Or they’ve decided to put me in storage while they think about it,” I said dryly. Drake’s face went blank. “What?” I said.

“I was just thinking. Hawk…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he doesn’t exactly teach much, does he?”

“Doesn’t he?”

Drake shook his head. “He’s…well. I’ve heard he’s a bit crazy. He doesn’t have regular classes. My dad said when he was at school, he never saw Hawk except at admissions. You saw how he was with Tessa. I mean, I’d never say something bad about one of the Circle, but some people say he’s not right in the head.”

I frowned. Had the masters decided to pawn me off on Captain Crackpot? Me? The Fayter that they had been waiting for all this time?49

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Drake said, regaining some of his earlier cheer. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

We made our way there with surprising ease. Mostly because I have incredible navigational instincts. Also because Drake asked for directions.

The entrance to Stores was in the lowest dungeon of the university, and it was a long, creepy hike to get down there. We passed whole wings that looked like they had been abandoned for centuries, doors covered in cobwebs, suits of armor with small, rustling creatures living inside. Finally, at the bottom of a damp stone staircase, we came to an ugly brown door that smelled like it might have been made from a petrified dinosaur turd.50 There was a suit of armor beside it and a little brass plaque that said “Stores.”

I raised my hand to knock and immediately the door was flung open. Hawk stood there, dressed more frumpily than before, his eyes wild in the morning light.

“What is the Fayter’s friend doing at my door?” he demanded.

“A boy told us you wanted me here,” I said defensively.

“You, yes. Him, no.” He thumped Drake in the chest with an accusatory finger and shouted, “BEGONE!”

Drake jumped and fled up the stairs, sneezing with every third step. Halfway up, he paused long enough to give me a look that was somewhere between “good luck” and “it was nice knowing you.” Then he was gone.

“Good. Now then,” Hawk said, rubbing his hands together and turning his sharp eyes on me, “I have just one question before you may enter. Are you having a good day or a bad day?”

“Huh?” I said, perplexed. “I guess it’s good so far.”

He shook his head. “No. Are you having a good day or a bad day?” He started talking faster. “Obviously that’s not what you call it…hmm. An up day or a down day? A bright day or a dark day?”

I gave him a blank look. Drake had obviously underestimated the situation: Hawk was nuts. Flying squirrel nuts.51

He looked slightly put out. “Safe or dangerous?” he guessed. “On or off? Lucky or Unlucky? Aha!”

My mouth had dropped open.

“Lucky or unlucky!” he said triumphantly. “Which is it today, then? Lucky or unlucky?”

“Lucky,” I admitted. “Today’s lucky. But how do you—”

“Come in, then,” he said, tugging me through the door. It was utterly dark inside. “Gibeah,” he said, and a torch burst into flame, setting fire to my shirt.

“Yikes!” Hawk pummeled me several times in the stomach to put out the flames. “I thought you said this was a lucky day!”

I groaned, feeling like I’d just been punched in the gut. Because I had. But a second later, I forgot my pain. The torch fire was the color of clear blue sky, and just as bright. The Midnight Blue. Several other torches had sprung to life, illuminating a long, narrow room with a door on one side, surrounded by shelves packed with what looked like notecards.

Hawk was studying me. “So,” he said, “you’ve been admitted to Skelligard, and I’m your sponsor.”

I felt a flutter of exhilaration that must have shown on my face because he sighed and said, “Yes, yes, very exciting and all that. But there’s one thing we should get out of the way right up front: I didn’t want to be your sponsor.” He glared at me, daring me to ask why.

“Why?”

“Don’t ask questions!” he snapped. “But since you did, I have three reasons.” He held up his fingers. “One, because I knew you’d ask too many questions. Two, because nobody, including me, really understands how to teach a Fayter to use his magic. Three, because any attempt to guide a Fayter is doomed to fail. Do you know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because Fayters make their own fate. They defy the norm. They violate propriety.” His voice grew deadly quiet. “They break the rules.”

I was about to say that I had no intention of breaking the rules (Which was not strictly true. Rules are, after all, made to be broken.), but he pulled something from the pocket of his cloak and rushed on.

“Speaking of rules, here are yours.” He handed me a medallion like the one I had seen Basil use to open the gate yesterday. It was made of bronze and hung from a thick black cord. On the face was a depiction of Skelligard, and on the reverse, beneath my name, was a copy of my code:

I will be my best self.

I will honor my word.

I will help those I can.

I will never give up.

“This is your codex,” Hawk explained. “It is your law. Your name and code have been given to the Zohar, and you will be rewarded and punished based on how well you live by it.”

“What?” I said, horrified. “What does that mean? What’s a Zohar?”

Hawk waved dismissively. “Anyone can tell you boring things like that. Let’s go do something interesting.” He picked up a clipboard that hung from the side of the shelves and showed it to me. “This is today’s ledger. It shows items to be stored and exhumed.52

“Exhumed?” I said. “Isn’t that a bit drastic?”

“No.” He tapped the paper, indicating that I should read it.

Store:

2 cases blackplumb mead

Exhume:

1 privy kit

1 second-century priceless etching of Rellik the Seer

3 dozen hoop mice

“Here you go,” he said, dropping a heavy wooden case in my arms. “One case of blackplumb mead. Can you take the other? Good.” He stacked the second one on top the first and I nearly toppled over. I got my balance just in time to see him take a length of rope out of his pocket. There were seven keys hanging from it, each of them smaller than the next, so that the first was the size of my open hand and the last was no larger than a baby’s tooth.

He placed the seven keys into seven matching locks on the door and then turned them one by one. There was a click, and the door swung inward, revealing a staircase so steep that I was sure I would fall to my death if I tried to carry the cases down it.

“You will carry the cases,” he said. “I will carry the clipboard. I will walk behind you, in case you fall to your death. This is the silent stair, where we contemplate the seven horrors contained in the vaults below and pledge our vigilance to keep them bound. Do you swear to be as safe as possible and never compromise the secrets of Stores?”

“Sure,” I grunted, shifting the boxes. I was busy wondering what seven horrors the vaults might contain.

“Good.” He stepped behind me and nudged me forward.

“Hawk,” I said hesitantly, “what are the seven horrors you were—”

“Shhh,” he whispered. “The silent stair, remember?”

It went down farther than I would have thought possible, and soon beads of sweat were forming on my brow. My fingers ached on the hard corners of the cases and it took a force of will not to drop them. I tried not to think about how far I would fall if I did, or what I would do if the torches went out.

Then I slipped. If I hadn’t been nearly at the bottom, I’m sure I would have died. As it was, I slid down three steps and landed painfully. Somehow I managed to not drop the cases.

“Lucky,” Hawk said, helping me up. “See, that’s exactly why I asked. I’d be mad to let you loose in here when you’re disaster-prone.”

“Hey,” I said, remembering, “how do you know about that, anyway? I’ve never told anyone.”

He swept away from me. “Because I am the foremost expert on the first and only Fayter, Rellik the Seer. There is very little good information to be had about him—mostly secondhand accounts—but there is some mention of his early days.”

“And he had my luck thing, too?” I guessed.

“He called them his good and bad days,” Hawk said. “He experienced them until he learned to master his power. The fact that you do as well is a sign that you are indeed a Fayter. Or that you have been bitten by a Norvackian luck weasel.” He stopped suddenly. “You haven’t, have you?”

“I don’t think so.”

The little passageway opened into a vast network of tunnels, and I gasped. It was a dark, incomprehensible maze. Left down here without a light or a map, I’d be like a gnat trapped in a web of darkness. Like a fly in peanut butter. Like a slug in a slingshot.53

“Yes,” Hawk said, guessing at my thoughts. “Looks nasty the first time, doesn’t it? I’d forgotten. Stay close. If you get lost, I might never find you again.” He turned sharply, vanishing down a side passage. I hurried to follow. Seven more times—no, eight—he turned. Finally we reached a small woooden dooor, painted with a sickle mooon and coovered in coobwebs.54

“This is where we hide things for Gladstone,” he said fondly. “He is utterly paranoid. Any time he comes by something remotely valuable, such as this mead, he begins to fear that someone will steal it. Then he gives it to me to hide for him. Ridiculous man. He’ll just be wanting it out again when the holidays come.” He pushed open the door and we ducked into a small storage room filled with junk—a box of notebooks, a rusty wagon, some sort of dog costume, a glass jar full of screws, and a dozen other oddments. We put the mead in the wagon, and as Hawk bent over, a medallion slipped out from beneath his cloak. A codex. It looked much like mine, except it had a different picture on it—swords or branches or something—and in the very center was a gleaming black stone.

“Does everyone wear those?” I asked, indicating his codex.

Hawk glanced down and tucked it back beneath his clothes. “All wizards do, yes.”

“How come mine doesn’t have a little gem in it?”

Hawk sniffed. “Because you are not a fully trained wizard. If you ever complete your schooling here, a capstone will be added to your codex.” He handed me the clipboard and I crossed the mead off the list.

“What’s next?” he said. “Start from the bottom.”

“Hoop mice?”

“Ah.” He strode back into the passageway. “Those will be for Boris. Off to the Menagerie.”

It took nine more turns and three staircases to get there, by which time I was thoroughly lost. Finally he stopped at a large green door.

“What’s the Menagerie?” I asked warily, eyeing a set of large claw marks on the lower edge of the door.

“It’s where we keep the beasts,” he said pleasantly. “Keep close now. Shame to be eaten on your first day.”

I followed him through the door and stepped into a jungle. A whole, outdoor, jungley55 rainforest, complete with swamps and vines and creepy bird noises. To my credit, upon stepping out of an underground cavern and into, you know, the Amazon, I did not let fly any girlish shouts of surprise. The hair on my neck did stand up suddenly, which I guessed was because I was in danger of being eaten by something hairy. Hopefully not Hawk.

But Hawk seemed unworried, so I followed him for a dozen steps until he stopped in a small clearing. He reached into his cloak and drew out a large cloth sack, then raised one arm and shouted: “HOOP MICE! THREE DOZEN!”

They scampered out from under bushes and inside logs. They ran like crazy little gymnasts performing something like leap frog, except that instead of springing over one another, they leapt through each other’s bodies. A mouse would jump, and another would leap and curl into a hoop for the first to dive through.

“These little blighters exhibit the most strenuous form of ambulation56 in the animal kingdom,” Hawk said fondly. “Boris always uses them in his lecture on engineering efficiency as an example of what not to do.” Hawk began scooping mice into the bag.

“Isn’t it a bit presumptuous to criticize something God engineered?” I said.

Hawk stopped short, holding a mouse aloft. “Goodness, Simon. Do you believe in God?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Interesting.” He tossed the mouse in the bag.

“What?” I said. “Don’t you?”

“I believe in myself,” he said easily. “If there is a god, then I expect him to believe in me as well.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that, and I didn’t ask. When he collected all the mice, he handed me the bag. I threw it over my shoulder, trying to look as if none of this surprised me—as if I wasn’t bothered by the undulating mass within the bag or the distant roar of something huge within the forest (or the forest itself, for that matter). Hawk moved with the humdrum ease of a person doing something completely unexceptional, and I guessed that he would not appreciate my freaking out.

I followed him back out of the Menagerie and was glad when the door was firmly shut behind us. Several minutes later, after we had crossed an underground bridge, a broken-down water wheel, and an eerily silent well, we entered a giant warehouse. There were miles and miles of insanely high aisles, all filled from floor to ceiling with barrels and crates and wooden boxes of every size. Everywhere we walked, torches of blue fire burst into light ahead of us and extinguished themselves once they were behind us.

“This place is called Trove,” he said. “What do you keep in a trove, Simon?”

“Treasure?” I guessed.

“Precisely. There is not one object in this room worth less than a small farm. Don’t drop those mice. They’ll eat something and I’d have to sell you to pay for it.”

I gave a weak laugh, hoping that he was joking, but he did not return it.

“Ah, here we are.”

He stopped so quickly that I almost ran into him. Then he scampered up a stack of crates with such dexterity that it gave me chills to watch him. Humans didn’t move like that. A moment later, he returned with a thin leather tube.

“The etching of your namesake,” he said. “For Ioden’s class. If he were any less of a prude, he’d just show his students the painting on display in the grand hall, but he stubbornly believes that this relic is more accurate.”

I crossed it off the list and tucked the leather tube under my arm. “You don’t like him, do you?” I asked, remembering his words at my admittance.

“Of course not,” he said as if it was a ridiculous question.

Several minutes later, at the end of a long tunnel, we came to a door of dull-gray iron. Hawk unlocked it with the largest key from his ring and opened it to reveal a small landing with a rope ladder that climbed up out of sight above us. A torch burst into light beside the ladder. We climbed.57

At the top was a room that, well…imagine the most random objects from the fifty biggest museums in the world. Now throw in a truck full of trash and a bucket full of dust and dump it all haphazardly into a log cabin. That’s what this place looked like.

“What do you call this?” I asked.

“The Cabinet of Curiosities,” Hawk said reverently.

“Good name,” I admitted.

“This is the most dangerous room in Stores,” Hawk said, surprising me. “Don’t ever come in here at night.”

“I thought the rule is you aren’t supposed to go inside the school at all during the night?”

“Rules are made to be broken,” he mumbled, looking around the room.

That caught me off guard, too. “Why is it so dangerous?”

Hawk stopped his visual search of the room and laughed. “I daresay you’ll find that out for yourself.”

Unsure of what he meant, I followed him around the room as we hunted for the privy kit. As I had no idea what it looked like, I mostly just admired my surroundings. There was an ornate black cabinet tipped on its side, a twelve-foot hourglass filled with golden sand, a giant stuffed bird, and a large trunk wrapped in chains.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the trunk.

“One of the oldest mysteries of Skelligard,” Hawk said, sticking his head inside a wardrobe. “It’s been here since the founding of the school. Probably belonged to Feydrian, Rellik’s apprentice. Maybe even to Rellik himself.”

“What’s inside?” I said, staring at it. This might have belonged to a Fayter. Suddenly, looking at the trunk, I felt a strange sensation in my gut; it was something like butterflies. Or fire. But I knew it wasn’t butterflies or fire. It was magic.

“How should I know?” Hawk said, completely unaware of my little breakthrough. “See those chains? They’re galvanic steel. Completely unbreakable, even by magic. And the lock, an ancient priori name mechanism. It was sealed for a specific person, and only that person can open it by speaking their name into the lock. Simon!”

I froze. I was bending over the lock, ready to speak my name. It might have been Rellik’s, after all, and I was kind of his heir, wasn’t I? You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same.

“I forbid you to try that. I doubt it would open for you, but we don’t know what’s inside, and I’d much prefer you to be a more powerful wizard before you attempt it. Also, I’d like to be somewhere else when you try it, in case there is something horrible locked in there that eats you. I don’t want to see that. I’ve just had breakfast.”

“Right,” I said.

“Ah!” Hawk pointed to an old bucket and scrub brush on top of a bookcase. “Here we are. One privy kit for my new student.”

“For me?” I said. “It looks like just an old bucket and scrub brush.”

He beamed at me. “It is an old bucket and scrub brush. How clever of you. We haven’t used archaic cleaning tools like this for a hundred years.”

“Then what will I be doing with it?” I said, feeling a growing sense of dread.

“Why, cleaning the privies, of course.”

“And a privy is…?”

“A toilet,” Hawk said seriously. “In castles, they are also sometimes called latrines, but we call them privies.”

“And when am I going to do this?” I said incredulously. Somehow I doubted that the other students would be cleaning toilets.

“On your unlucky days,” Hawk said. “I already told you. I can’t let you in here when you’re dangerous.”

“Am I being punished?”

“No.”

“It feels like I am.”

“Fine. You are.”

“For what?”

Hawk waved a hand skeptically. “For something you will do later, I expect. You seem like the type that gets into trouble.”

“Why can’t I just go to classes with the other teachers?”

Hawk laughed. “You won’t be having many classes with the other teachers.” He began to descend the rope ladder and I moved to follow.

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to remain calm. I finally asked the question that had been burning in me all morning.

“Master Hawk,” I said, “why did they pick you to be my sponsor?”

He froze on the ladder below me, looking up with an amused expression. “I would have thought that was obvious.”

I shook my head.

“Well,” he said, jumping to the bottom, “as I said, any attempt to instruct you will surely end in doom, or at least failure. No one knows how to teach a Fayter to use his magic, as there are no Fayters among us.”

He stood just outside the door to the cabinet now, and I was leaning against the rope ladder next to a blue torch, pretending to pay attention, but really I was thinking about the mysterious chain-bound trunk.

“Every magical talent is a little different, you see,” Hawk went on. “As different as musical instruments. There is a good deal of common ground, but in the end a piano player makes a poor teacher for someone trying to learn the gurunka.” He paused. “Those are Earthly instruments, right?”

“The first one is.”

He looked slightly put out. “Well, anyway, the other masters don’t want to tarnish their fine reputations with your failure. Whilst I”—he swept a hand to his chest dramatically—“am already possessed of a tarnished reputation and therefore have no further to fall.”

“I’m sure you’re not that bad,” I said hopefully. I hardly liked the idea of getting stuck with the school reject as my sponsor, even if he was a knight of the Circle.

“You’re wrong,” he said fervently. “I’m crap at teaching. Brilliant otherwise, obviously. But I couldn’t train a dog to sit, let alone teach young wizards to harness hidden powers. Don’t have the patience.” He grinned at me. “See?” He slammed a door between us and the torch beside me sputtered out, leaving me in complete darkness.

“Hawk?” I shouted into the darkness.

Nothing.

I felt panic. He had said this was the most dangerous room in Stores, and that I would find out why. Was this what he meant? Would he really leave me in here? If I got out, could I find my way back?

“HAWK!”

“Frightening, isn’t it?” Hawk’s muffled voice came through the door.

“Not at all,” I said smoothly. “I just miss you terribly. Open the door, please.”

“Nope. It’s time for you to do your first spell.”

“But I haven’t even broken yet!”

“Too bad,” he sang cheerfully. “That will only make it harder. Are you ready?”

I forced myself to calm down. It wasn’t like he was going to leave me to die. I was being stupid. “Ready,” I said.

“It’s the spell you’ve heard me doing all morning. The blue fire.”

“How do I do it?”

“Just say the magic word,” he said in a taunting voice.

“Gibeah?”

“Tut tut,” he chided. “You’ll have to say it with more power than that.”

“Gibeah!” I commanded. My voice echoed around me, sounding silly. Nothing happened.

“Come on, now,” Hawk said. “Try.”

“I am trying. Gibeah!”

Nothing.

“Good grief, boy, I’ve seen wet socks with more heat than you. Put some feeling into it!”

“You haven’t told me how to do it!” I shouted angrily. “You can’t just…Argh! You are a crap teacher. GIBEAH!”

The torch beside me erupted with blue.

I stared at it dumbly. I felt the fiery butterflies in my stomach again.

“Better,” Hawk said. He had opened the door again. “You have just performed your first conscious spell. As you see, magical power is tied closely to our emotions. A thing which any love-struck teenager knows.” He slapped his belly. “Did you feel it?”

I nodded. “So I’ve broken after all?”

He chuckled. “Oh, no. Breaking implies that you have gained conscious awareness of your power. That you can feel it, use it when you want to. No, we’re not there yet. You have more likely experienced what we call a “tremor.” A brief, accidental breakthrough.”

For a moment, I considered telling him about the tremor I felt when looking at the trunk, but I got distracted by what he said next.

“You have conjured fire. And not just any fire, either. You have called the Midnight Blue. A thing which, I daresay, no other student at Skelligard is capable of.” His brow furrowed. “In fact, such a feat eludes several of the staff. Therefore, we can safely assume that you are indeed a wizard, and a very powerful one. Of course, we knew this already.”

“We did?”

“Obviously. You’re a Fayter, after all. Rellik was a Fayter, and he was the most powerful wizard in history.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I do not doubt that you will outshine him.”

5. Enemies

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

—Sun Tzu58

My head spun all the way out of Stores. I was dizzy with Hawk’s words, with the incomprehensible vastness of Stores, and the tantalizing mystery of Rellik’s trunk. I was distracted enough that I hardly heard a word Hawk said, but not so distracted that I failed to make a detailed set of directions to the Cabinet of Curiosities on my arm when he wasn’t looking.59

This is what I wrote:

LLRLLDULULSRLSRURDSRU

L for left turn, R for right. U for upstairs, etc. S meant we skipped an opening. Of course, I’d have to reverse it all when I came back to open the trunk, but that was no big deal. The hardest part would be figuring out how to steal Hawk’s keys.

I almost got away with my little map. Hawk gave me instructions to take the etching to Master Ioden and sit in on his history class, and I was actually out the door before he caught my wrist and cranked my arm into the air, nearly lifting my feet off the ground.

“Very clever,” he whispered. His nose was about an inch from my arm. “You’re not the first one to try something like this. Now get rid of it.”

He let my arm go and I glared at him. For lack of a more dignified option, I licked my hand and scrubbed the ink into a blur.

“Good, then,” he said happily. “Go away now.” He slammed the door with a bang.

I grinned defiantly at the closed door and took Hawk’s keys out of the waistband of my jeans. Ironically, if he hadn’t caught me like that, I wouldn’t have had a good opportunity to pick his pocket. He himself had given me the idea with that embarrassing question at admissions, so I figured he deserved it.60

I hid the keys in a nearby suit of armor and headed upstairs. I couldn’t be caught with them, obviously, and I doubted that Hawk would think to look there. My plan for sneaking into the Cabinet of Curiosities was nearly complete now. Granted, the loss of the directions had been a blow, but not a fatal one. I had managed to commit it to memory in the few seconds it took me to wipe it from my arm. As luck would have it, Atticus had spent a grueling summer teaching me advanced memory techniques, and I was particularly good at creating nonsense rhymes to capture lists. I set this one to the tune of Mary Had A Little Lamb:

Leaping Lions Raised a Lamb, (LLRL)

Left it Drinking Underpants, (LDU)

Liposuction Underpants, (LU)

Lions Saw they’re (w)Rong (LSR)

And so on. It’s not very good, and it makes no sense whatsoever, but give me a break; I did the whole thing in about five seconds under the hawk-eyed glare of an angry wizard, so I was pretty pleased with myself.

My happy mood did not last long.

When I made it to Ioden’s history class, it became clear to me that he didn’t just dislike me, I had made an enemy. On an unrelated note, I had suddenly broken out in a very painful, burning rash on my shoulders. Random, I know.

“Ah,” Ioden said with obvious disdain when I opened the door. “The storekeeper’s new errand boy. Late, as expected.”

I glanced at Drake and the look of surprise on his face made it clear that Ioden didn’t usually speak to students like this.

“Here is the etching you requested, Master Ioden,” I said politely, handing him the leather tube. “Master Hawk told me to sit in on your class.”

“Why?” Ioden sneered, then answered his own question. “I suppose he is too lazy to teach you himself, or because the basics of wizarding history escape him.” He gave me a taunting glare, daring me to argue, but as Hawk had just made me lick my own hand, I was hardly in a mood to defend his honor.

“I notice that you have no cloak. Were the Muses unable to make one to your liking?”

“They’re working on it,” I said, suddenly aware of how silly I looked. Everyone else was wearing their new cloaks, long graceful things in deep, majestic colors. I was wearing the only clothes I had: jeans and a yellow Pokémon T-shirt.61

“Sit in the back of the class and do not speak,” he instructed. “I don’t have time to waste on unbroken students.”

Whispers erupted all over the class and I guessed that Ioden had just confirmed a rumor about me. I thought about kicking him in the teeth and making a quick exit, but instead I flashed him a generous smile and took a seat at the back of the room, careful not to lean my burning shoulders against the back of my chair. That’s the best way to get back at people who are trying to embarrass or humiliate you: be the bigger person. They can’t stand it. I was pleased to see that Ioden was no exception—I could practically see smoke coming out of his ears.

“Very well,” Ioden said. “Now that we are done being interrupted, we may begin our instruction. It is customary for first-term students to complete a historic tour of the castle grounds. As we walk, I shall instruct you on various points of history, and you shall be silent. Those who make even the slightest noise out of turn will have their names written down by my assistant”—he motioned toward Basil—”and will not return to my class.”

Drake sneezed. He clamped his hands over his mouth, horrified. For my own part, I made a little half snort of laughter. For a moment, I thought Ioden might actually throw me out of the room, but in the end he just muttered something under his breath. We followed Ioden and Basil out of the classroom and into the central courtyard of the university. The main university building, usually just called the castle, stood directly before us. It rose to a great height, finally terminating in a series of peaks and towers. We’d had our admissions interviews in a large hall in there, and Stores sprawled beneath its deepmost62 levels. To either side of us, flanking the courtyard, were rows of smaller buildings reaching out from the main castle like two stone wings. Ioden’s classroom was in one of these.

The cobblestone courtyard was broken up by the occasional tree, and at the very center was a carefully sculpted garden. Ioden took us into this and pointed out what looked like a long ivory table set into the ground. It was intricately carved with unfamiliar words and depictions of great deeds.

“This is the famous Ivory Table,” Ioden said. “Does anyone know why it is famous?”

A girl in the front raised her hand. “Because it was brought here by Rellik?”

“Precisely.” He opened the leather tube and unrolled a thin sheet of what looked like tin, which was etched with a detailed image of a man in his middle years. He had a strong jaw and graceful features. “This is Rellik. Who knows why he is so important?”

A boy raised his hand. “Because he founded Skelligard?”

“Indeed.” Ioden gave him an appreciative nod, then sat down on the Ivory Table and motioned for us to follow. “The history of Skelligard is the history of wizardkind. Once, nearly two thousand years ago, wizards were a rare thing. Their magic was weak, and they could not travel between worlds. Each little planet was left to itself, and most thought they were alone in the universe.

“Then the great wizards arrived. Among them, Rellik the Seer was the most powerful. They say he saw the universe clearly from beginning to end. He was without a doubt the most powerful Seer that has ever lived, but this is not what he is most famous for. Does anyone know what he is most famous for?”

Several students raised their hands at once, and I became painfully aware of how ignorant I was.63

“One at a time,” Ioden said, and several students responded.

“He’s most famous for forming the Circle of Eight,” one said.

“For curing the great plague,” another added.

“And killing the Giant of Daru.”

“And capturing the Horror of Cain.”

Ioden nodded. “He is famous for these things, yes. But you have overlooked his greatest achievement.”

Beside me, Drake raised his hand tentatively. “Discovering the bloodstones?”

“Yes!” Ioden said. “The bloodstones are the heart of his success. Rellik looked into the future and saw great danger there, a plague that would destroy the universe, and he saw a way to avoid it. The bloodstones. Fifty stones like red glass. They were scattered about the universe, hidden even from Rellik’s eyes, but the person who could unite them all would have a power beyond imagination. He set out to find these stones, and because he was a wizard of uncommon luck and peculiar magical ability, he was successful.”

“How did the bloodstones work?” one of the other students asked.

“No one knows for sure. Some believe that the stones channel or enhance the powers of the bearer. Others hold that the stones themselves are possessed of inherent power. Either way, he used them to heal the great plague and change the fate of the world. So they called him a Fayter.”

Drake’s hand went up again. “I thought Rellik did all that stuff because he was a Fayter. Are you saying it was just a title they gave him after?”

Ioden rolled his eyes. “Growing up in a savage society as you did, I am not surprised that you labor under the burden of such colloquial fancies.” He eyed Drake’s horns pointedly.

Drake’s cheeks went a violent shade of red and several people sniggered.

I got out my pen again, pretended to be taking notes, and with a very serious expression, raised my hand. “Excuse me, Master Ioden. I didn’t quite hear you. Did you say you had to labor very hard to become such a colossal fancy?”

Several people gasped. Drake made a strange noise, as if he had nearly swallowed his face, but I couldn’t look at him. I was too busy staring down Ioden.

He gave me a small, chilling smile. It would have been much less threatening to just expel me from class, which is what I had expected him to do. This, on the other hand, made me nervous.

Ioden went on, as if nothing had happened. “As I was saying, the consideration of Fayter as its own talent is a silly, antiquated theory that most scholars abandoned long ago. After all, Rellik was a Seer, and if he was anything more than that, then he is the only such person we have ever seen.”

“Until Simon,” Drake said, surprising me with his boldness. He remembered to raise his hand at the last second.

“Do not interrupt me! I will get to our new Fayter soon enough.”

There it was. He had something nasty planned for me.

“Rellik slowly gained fame.” Ioden continued. “As he did, he gathered around himself the most powerful wizards in existence and formed the first Circle of Eight. Among this circle was Rellik’s brother, Rone. As Rellik’s power grew, as he gathered more and more of the bloodstones for himself, Rone became envious, then jealous, then violent.

“Finally, in order to protect the stones and the future generations of wizards from Rone’s wrath, Rellik founded Skelligard. In its making, he laid down certain measures, deep lines of ancient magic that made it impossible for Rone to enter. Rone was never heard from again after that. Most believe that Rellik killed him quietly but was too ashamed to admit it.”

“As for himself, Rellik died from a mortal wound that he received while defeating Tuloth the Giant, from whom he obtained the final bloodstone. Just before his death, he united the stones and healed the great plague. Then, in a remarkable display of an age-addled mind, he uttered the great prophecy and died.”

He gazed around at us triumphantly, as if he had just finished off the old wizard himself. “Can anyone recite the prophecy?”

Drake raised his hand.

“No one?” He sighed. “It is written on the face of every codex ever produced.”

“Codex?” I whispered to Drake.

“The medallions,” he whispered back. “The ones we get when we’re admitted. Hey, do you have one?”

I drew mine out and grinned at him, remembering that I hadn’t had time yet to explain what happened with Hawk. He gave me a thumbs-up.

I examined my codex more closely and saw that there were tiny words etched above the image of Skelligard. Ioden recited as I read along:

When five old trees and none

Are planted near his bones

The Fayter or the Son

Gain strength to alter worlds.

“While some weak-minded acolytes have come to believe that Rellik’s last words were some sort of prophecy about a future Fayter, most scholars, including myself, agree that Rellik was quite out of his mind by the time he spoke these words.”

“Of course, weak minds are had in abundance.” He glared at me. “Over the years, certain traditions have sprouted up concerning the so-called Fayter that many are waiting for. I would be happy to put all these rumors to rest once and for all. Simon, would you come here, please?”

Knowing that I was walking into some sort of trap, I held my head high on my way to the front of the group.

Ioden turned me to face the class and then rested his hands on my shoulders in a fatherly manner; it hurt so bad I nearly shouted.64

“Traditionally,” he said, “there are believed to be three signs by which we will know that the Fayter has come. First, he will possess the four lost bloodstones.”

He moved to stand beside me and opened his hand. “Do you have them?”

I gritted my teeth. “No,” I mumbled.

“What was that?” he said, leaning in. “I don’t think the class could hear you.”

“No,” I said more firmly.

He donned a look of mock concern. “I see. Well, perhaps you will have better luck with the second sign. It is said that the Fayter will reveal the location of Rellik’s tomb. Do you know where it is?”

“Uh, somewhere on Skelligard?” I guessed.

“Ah,” Ioden said patiently. “Yes. His apprentice, Feydrian, is said to have buried him and sealed his tomb with great treasures of knowledge inside. But no one has been able to find it. I take it you don’t know where it is, then?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” he said, voice dripping with pleasure. “Just one chance left.” He did a strange thing then. He took a little drawstring bag from his pocket and filled it with pebbles from the garden. Then he turned to face the class. “Would everyone please follow me?”

Ioden led us into the main hall of the castle where I’d had my admissions interview on the previous day. With daylight shining through the long stained-glass windows, I could see that the room was larger than I had first thought. Ioden stopped beneath a wide stone pillar in the center of the room and pointed up. Fifty feet above us, I could see a sword hanging in a glass case. There was a single stained-glass skylight far above, and the sun was streaming through it, holding the sword in an array of diffused colors.

“The sword of Rellik,” Ioden said dramatically. “Tradition states that the Fayter will throw a stone and break the glass. For hundreds of years, students have been sneaking into the grand hall to throw a stone and see if they are the Fayter. I believe this will be the first time in the history of Skelligard that a master has given them permission to do so.” He passed around the bag so that everyone could take a pebble.

“Go on, then,” he said.

We did. Like most people, my pebble didn’t even come close to hitting the glass. Two or three actually touched it, but they bounced off harmlessly. Fifty feet is a long way to throw a pebble, and I suspected that it was tempered glass.

“Didn’t you throw one?” Ioden said, handing me another pebble. “Try it again. Go on. Take your time.”

In all honesty, I have to admit that I was hoping for a miracle. After all, it was a lucky day. Stranger things than this had happened to me before. I pictured my little pebble striking some tiny flaw in the glass and causing a crack. The crack would grow, the glass would fall. I would catch the sword and wave it in front of Ioden’s face.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. I did hit the case this time, but like all the pebbles before it, mine bounced off without so much as a noise. No one seemed surprised, apart from Drake. He looked crushed. In that moment, I felt worse for him than I did for myself, which is saying something.

“Well,” Ioden sneered, clapping me on the shoulder again, causing me to grit my teeth. “I hope that this little demonstration will put an end to the rumors I have been hearing about the Fayter that has finally come to save us. Save us from what, I ask you. And where is this Fayter?” He stared directly at me. “I haven’t seen him.”

“So, how was History?”

Drake and I were sitting together for lunch and Tessa had just joined us.

“Not good,” I said.

“Master Ioden hates Simon,” Drake said. He proceeded to give a complete account of Ioden’s nastiness, after which we all agreed that he was a first-class fopdoodle. After that, they wanted to hear all about Stores.

“What’s Hawk like in person?” Drake said. “I mean, when I left you, I thought you were a goner. Is he really crazy?”

I shrugged, pushing what I hoped were peas around my plate. “A little. He says he’s a bad teacher, but I think that’s just an act. He doesn’t like answering questions, though. Especially if he thinks they’re boring.” I frowned. “That reminds me. Do you guys know what a Zohar is?”

“What the Zohar are,” Drake corrected. “Of course we do. Classic bedtime story. Dad used to tell it to me all the time.”

I cleared my throat. “Would you mind sharing?”

“Sure. The Zohar are a race of immortal, all-knowing beings who live on the planet Zoharadon, which is pretty much a ball of burning light.” He held up an orange as an example.

“Okay…” I said. “That’s…really random. But what do these light gods have to do with my codex? Hawk said—”

“Ah!” Drake said enthusiastically. “The most important thing to understand about the Zohar is that they have a very powerful relationship to magic. To them, magic is like a person. A being. Something that they can speak to and reason with. Back in the early days, when the first wizards were learning to use magic, their power was very unpredictable. Dangerous, even. Magic didn’t respond to them well. So they went to the Zohar for help. The Zohar, of course, agreed to advocate their cause. To speak to the magic on behalf of the wizards.” Drake paused to take a bite of his orange. He ate it like an apple, taking a whole chunk out of it, rind and all.

“Did it work?” I asked, eying the orange with some concern. “Did they fix the magic?”

“Oh, yeah,” Drake said through a mouthful, “but the Zohar didn’t do it for free.”

“There was a catch?”

“Yep. The Zohar had tried to help people with magic before, and then those people would go and do bad things with it. So when the wizards came, they made them swear to live by a code. Ever since then, every wizard who hopes to gain any real power over their magic has to write a code and then live by it. If they keep the code, their magic works, and the Zohar reward them with wealth.”

“Wealth?” I said, excited.

Drake shook his head. “Not money. Magical wealth. Sort of like extra power. It gets saved up in your codex when you keep to your code, and then you can use it to make your magic more powerful. Or to keep yourself alive. That’s why some wizards live so long. Take Atticus, for instance. He’s what, like three hundred years old?”

“He is?” I said, shocked.

“Sure,” Drake said. “He’s good at keeping his code.”

“What happens if you’re bad at keeping it?” I asked.

“Then you’re punished,” Drake said. “Usually it’s something small. A headache. An itch you can’t scratch. Static electricity in your socks. A toothache.”

“A rash?” I said, remembering the painful one I’d had earlier.

Drake’s eyes narrowed.

“Simon,” Tessa said, “do you have a rash?”

“That’s kind of a personal question,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Fine. I did earlier today. It’s gone now.”

“Did you break your code right before you got it?”

I thought about my code. What was the second point? Honoring my word? I had stolen the keys and made a map of Stores right after promising to keep its secrets. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I did.”

“There you go,” Drake said. “You’ve already been punished, see?”

I frowned, disturbed at the idea that some crazy magic megadudes from the other side of the galaxy had the power to give me a rash.

“What if it’s a bigger thing?” I asked. “I mean, what if you do something more serious?”

“Then you end up like my uncle Darion,” Tessa said. “His code said that he would never steal. Then he started stealing, and his hands started itching. They itched and itched, but he just kept stealing. Then one day, he woke up without any arms.”

“What?” I said, horrified. “They took his arms?”

“Yep. They grew back eventually, but not for months.” She smiled fondly. “Aunt Sutra never let him forget it, either. Bugs him about it all the time. Partly because she doesn’t want him to forget and start stealing again, and partly because she’s still angry. Without his arms, he couldn’t do anything for himself. She had to tie his shoes, make his food, dress him and bathe him and wipe his—”

“Anyway,” Drake cut in loudly, “that’s what happens when you ignore the little punishments. They get bigger. It’s also a good example of why it’s so important to word your code carefully. If he had said something like, ‘I’ll be honest in my work,’ then he might have still been able to steal on the side, see? Not that that’s a good thing…”

I took out my codex and examined it. “I wish someone would have told me all this before I wrote my code.”

Tessa took it from me and the two of them read it over. When they were done, Tessa gave a low whistle.

“What?” I said.

“Well,” Tessa began, “this first one’s tricky. You’ll be your best self? What does that really mean? Can you be punished for not being your best self, even if you don’t know what your best self is?”

“Woah,” I said. “This is bad.”

“Not necessarily,” Drake countered. “It might actually give you a lot of freedom. For example, you might be able to get away with some not-so-great-behavior—like mouthing off to teachers, for example—because the Zohar see that personality flaw as a part of your true self. No. It’s number two I’m worried about.”

“I must honor my word?” I said.

“Right. You are going to have to pay close attention to everything you say you’ll do. You should probably carry a notebook around with you and write down every promise or commitment you make. Even if it’s as small as ‘I’ll think about it’ or ‘I won’t be late.’”

“Actually,” Tessa said, “I think number four is the worst. ‘I’ll never give up.’ That’s just mad. What if you’re climbing a cliff or something, and then you have to turn back because it’s too dangerous?”

“But,” I stammered, “that’s not what I meant! I mean, that’s not giving up. That’s just changing your mind.”

Tessa shrugged. “I hope the Zohar see it that way.”

I took my codex back and slumped into my chair. “This is way more complicated than I thought.”

“Don’t worry about it so much,” Drake advised, patting me on the back. “Try to eat something. Tell us what happened in Stores.”

“Yeah,” Tessa said. “Did Hawk teach you anything interesting?”

“Well,” I said smugly. “If conjuring the Midnight Blue is interesting…”

“What?” Drake said, choking on his water.

Tessa looked dumfounded. “He taught you that?” she said in wonder. “And you did it? But I thought it was supposed to be very difficult.”

“Well,” I said humbly, “it did take me a couple tries.”

“Wow,” Drake said, clapping me on the back. He looked around the room proudly, as if hoping to be seen with me. “Good job, mate. You’re going to be famous here.”

Tessa, who had apparently recovered from her admiration, rolled her eyes. “Did anything else happen, or is that it?”

I grinned, then told them about Rellik’s trunk. I was pleased to see that they were appropriately impressed.

“Too bad he wouldn’t let you open it,” Tessa said. “I bet it is your name that unlocks it.”

“I know it is,” I said, surprised at the confidence in my voice.

Tessa held up a hand. “Hold on, how can you know?”

I shrugged. “Just a feeling, I guess.”

Drake’s eyes went wide. “Maybe it’s your fate to open it, and you know, you can sense it or something. Because you’re a Fayter.”

“Yeah,” I said easily, though I didn’t think that was it at all.

“How long do you think Hawk will make you wait before he lets you try to open it?”

“Years, I’d think,” Tessa said. “Until he’s a real wizard.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “But what if I need what’s in the chest in order to become a real wizard?”

Drake frowned. “What do you mean?”

I rushed on, glad to finally get the theory off my chest. “Hawk says nobody wants to teach me because they don’t understand how Fayters use their magic, right? But Rellik was a Fayter, and he figured it out, and he knew that I would be coming, so maybe he had something—something in the chest that will help me be a Fayter.”

Tessa was nodding slowly. “You’ve got a point.”

“But don’t you think,” Drake protested, “that if there was such a thing, the masters would just give it to you?”

“But they don’t know what’s in the trunk,” Tessa pointed out. “If it’s in there, they couldn’t know about it.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Drake sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter. You’ll find out eventually if you open it.”

“But if it’s something he needs now,” Tessa said, “something that will help him break, for instance, wouldn’t sooner be better than later?”

I looked at Tessa appreciatively. She was reading my mind.

“I suppose,” Drake conceded. “Maybe if you ask them, the masters will let you open it sooner. After the first term is over or something.”

“I was thinking more like tonight,” I said casually.

Drake spat out a mouthful of water.

Tessa blinked at me. “Say what?”

I explained about the keys and my map.

“You stole from a Master?” Drake said loudly.

Tessa cuffed him on the side of the head with her salad fork. “Shh! Tell the whole school, why don’t you…Eww! You got hair all over my fork!”

Drake looked slightly sheepish. “Sorry. I’m shedding. But seriously, Simon, you stole from a Master? On your first day?”

I shrugged. “I think he wanted me to do it.” As soon as this lie was out of my mouth, I realized that it might actually be the truth. “He showed me how to get there, let me see where he kept the keys, told me how to open the chest, and then said it was my destiny. He even asked me if I could pick his pocket! I mean, how much more of a hint can he give me? I’m sure he’s not allowed to let me open it or something, so he told me how to do it.”

I could tell Drake thought I was out of my mind, but Tessa looked halfway convinced. “Anyway,” I said boldly, “I’m going to do it tonight. Want to come?”

“Uh, yeah,” Tessa said, as if it were a ridiculous question.

We looked at Drake. I tried to put on my best peer pressure face.

“No way,” he said flatly. “What about your codex? Weren’t you listening to anything we said?”

“Drake, Hawk wants me to do it. I can feel it. That’s basically permission!”

“If you want to get expelled on your first day, go ahead. But leave me out of it.”

He must have known that I was about to be extremely persuasive, because he left his food half-eaten and practically ran out of the room.

“In all seriousness, Tessa,” I said, “are you sure you want to come? I mean, will your codex let you?”

“Sure,” she said easily. “My code’s not nearly as dumb as yours.”

I sighed, still watching the door Drake had left through. “You don’t think he’s going to tell on us, do you?”

“Naw,” Tessa replied through a mouthful of chicken. “He’ll be there. Deep down, our furry little scholar is a man of action. He wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

I hoped she was right.

6. The Midnight Blue

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

—Friedrich Nietzsche65

She was wrong. Drake was AWOL66 for the rest of the day. We waited for him in our clearing on Fluff till almost eleven (I still wore a cheap Timex watch that I’d had since I was ten, so we knew exactly what time it was), then I told Tessa we had to go. There was only one more hour in the day, and I didn’t want to risk being down in Stores, opening an ancient magical chest inside a haunted wizard school on an unlucky day. Hopefully one hour would be enough.

It wasn’t as hard to break into the school as I expected. Actually, the front door was unlocked. Apparently the masters thought the threat of ghosts and demons was enough to keep us out. Boy, were they wrong.

The only flaw in my plan was that I had no light. Some Midnight Blue would have been just the thing, but they extinguished all the torches at night, and of course, I hadn’t thought of stealing one during the day.

That is why when we opened the front door and I saw a nearby statue holding a blue torch, I was pleasantly surprised.

Then the statue sneezed.

“Drake?”

“What were you going to do?” Drake said. “Wander through Stores in the dark?”

“I’d like to remind you that I can conjure the Midnight Blue all by myself,” I lied.

“That’s right, I forgot. I guess I can just put this out, then.”

“Wait!” Tessa cried. “Okay, okay. Simon’s sorry. Right, Simon?”

I shrugged.

“And Drake, you’re very clever meeting us here with exactly what we need. Will you come with us now?”

Drake held up a finger. “I came to tell you why this is such a bad idea. First off, you don’t know what might be in that chest. It could be something horrible.”

“Like what?” I said, leaning smugly against the wall. Deep down, I was just happy Drake showed up.

“Like Rellik’s body,” Drake said. “You heard what Master Ioden said. They never found his tomb.”

“Yuck,” Tessa said.

I yawned. “That’s spooky, but not horrible.”

“Or,” Drake continued, “it could be something worse. You don’t know much about history because you’re from Earth, but Rellik defeated a bunch of monsters, and not all of them have been accounted for. What if he locked one of them in that trunk?”

“And then made it so that only I could open it?” I said skeptically. “We’re going, Drake. You can come with us or not. But I hope you come.”

Drake gave an exasperated sigh. “Fine. I’ll come, but if I die, it’s your fault.”

“Agreed,” I said, and I took the torch from him.

Tessa slapped him on the back. “Man of action,” she said. “Knew it.”

I was mentally prepared to see horrible, frightening things as we walked through the school, but I didn’t. Drake thought he saw things several times and sneezed practically the whole way to Stores, but our journey was otherwise uneventful. I retrieved the keys from the suit of armor and opened the outer door using the largest one.

“Wow,” Tessa said when we were inside. “It’s way smaller than you made it out to be.”

“This is just the entrance. The rest is down here.” I put the seven keys in the seven locks and opened the door to the staircase. Darkness stared up at us like a living thing. It had been dark even in the daytime, of course, but not this dark, and Hawk had been with me then, so I hadn’t been afraid. Now it was a full-on, skin-prickling abyss.

Drake sneezed.

Somehow, that sneeze gave me courage. I handed Drake the torch and offered him a reassuring smile, then led the way down the stairs.67

Tessa held the directions that I had re-written and I made her constantly double check them as we went along.

“Left,” she read.

“Left,” I echoed, and we went left. It took much, much longer than I remembered. Most likely, it just seemed longer.

We were about halfway there when Drake said, “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“I heard it,” Tessa said. “Like laughing. Kids laughing.”

We rounded a corner and nearly ran into two young girls. They were walking hand in hand. They might have been skipping home from school, except that their bodies were glowing faintly and their eyes were empty pits of black. One of them laughed. The other grinned at me, revealing a mouthful of purple teeth.

Tessa screamed. I froze. Then, in an uncharacteristic display of poise, Drake barreled forward, brandishing the Midnight Blue and sneezing like an elephant.

When the flame touched them, the phantom girls evaporated like mist in the midday sun.

Drake and I gave each other a long, appraising look and we nodded in silent agreement. I had learned there was more to him than met the eye, and he had learned that we needed him.68

Those were the first specters that we saw, but there were more: a giant black bear with a spear through its chest; an old woman sitting on a basket, shivering, weaving her long gray hair into a blanket; a large green-skinned man with one arm.

Each time, Drake waved the torch and they evaporated. Soon, we stopped being so afraid.

That was a mistake.

According to my map, we were only four turns away when Tessa stopped short. “Um,” she said, pointing to a spot on the floor before us. “What is that?”

“Just boots,” I said. “Someone must have left them here by accident.”

“How do you leave your boots behind by accident?” Tessa said. “Plus, they look ancient. No way those have been down here for that long without someone noticing.”

“Um, guys?” Drake was backing up, pointing a quivering finger at the boots.

I glanced back at them just as they took a step toward us. Then another. Empty boots, walking.

“Give me that,” I said, taking the torch from Drake. I waved it at the boots, but unlike the other apparitions, they did not just disappear. In fact, they sped up, taking several quick steps toward us.

Drake squeaked, and Tessa grabbed my arm, but I wasn’t running yet. There was something odd about these boots (apart from the fact that they were moving on their own, I mean). They were leaving something behind. Tracks? Puddles? I bent closer to them, holding up the torch.

They were tracks all right, dark, wet boot prints on the stone. But it wasn’t water. It was blood.

“Run!” Tessa yelled.

Drake and I did not need to be told twice. For a second, I even thought we would be able to get away, but then we ran into a dead end. We turned around and the boots were there again, coming closer.

It was then that I made one of the most crucial split-second decisions of my life. Psychologists will tell you that in high-stress situations, our bodies react with something called the “fight or flight response.” In about one second, the brain releases hormones like adrenaline and epinephrine and the body releases sugar and fat to burn like rocket fuel. Heart rate, breathing, blood pressure increase. Digestion, liver function, hearing decrease. Suddenly we can only focus on one thing. Blood has left the brain and been rerouted to our legs and arms. This makes it easier to run or fight. It also makes you substantially dumber than you were a second before. This means that we sometimes run when we should fight, and we sometimes fight when we should run.69

For whatever reason, I decided to fight. I hurled myself at the boots. They were just boots, right? If I could pounce on them, throw them behind us, we could get away. But it didn’t work. Instead of landing on the boots, I collided with something in the air just above them. The boots tipped backward, retreating several steps.

“Come on!” I shouted, charging past them. In a moment, we were running down the hallway that we had been meaning to take earlier. Before long, the boots were chasing us again. There was no time to go back now. Only forward. I wasn’t about to attack the boots again. I had hit something solid above them, and I knew what that meant. There was a person in those boots.

I frantically tried to remember the last four turns, and before I had time to second-guess myself, we were there. I jammed the large key into the lock, opened it, and slammed the door behind us. I expected a thud as the boots hit the door, but it never came. Quickly, I inserted the key again and locked them out.70

“Well,” I said. “That was freaky.”

“Freaky?” Drake said. “We could have died! What were those things? Why didn’t the Midnight Blue affect them?”

“I’ve heard of them,” Tessa said. “Or him. The Bloody Prince. Or maybe it should be the Bloody Prints. I always thought they were just silly ghost stories. They say he’s haunted Skelligard since the beginning.”

“Well, I guess it’s not just stories,” I said. “Drake, you having fun yet?”

“Let’s just get this done so we can get out of here.”

When we were sure that the boots—the Bloody Prince—wasn’t following us, we ascended the ladder. I was sure the danger was past. I certainly never thought that we were about to meet a monster more terrible than the one we had left behind.

Drake and Tessa were suitably impressed by the Cabinet of Curiosities. Then, when we came to the trunk, Drake started to protest again and Tessa silenced him. We were already here, she told him. There was no going back now.

She was right, of course. Nothing could have torn me away from that trunk right then. I was feeling the fiery butterflies again. A tremor. The trunk was calling for me. I knelt in front of it, touched the cold galvanic chains, and brushed cobwebs off the face of the lock. In that moment I knew that it had brought me here, and that it would open when I spoke my name.

It did.

I whispered, and the lock clicked open. The chains came to life, writhing around the trunk like a snake, then wound themselves into a neat coil on the floor and were still.

I exhaled loudly. I’d been holding my breath. But I wasn’t nervous. I was excited. This was the right thing to do. My hands fumbled with the latch and I pulled open the lid.

My heart sank at first, because the trunk was almost empty. There were only two things inside. My eyes fell first on a bundle wrapped in brown paper. I touched it, and the thousand-year-old paper disintegrated, falling away as dust.

“I guess it’s passed its expiration date,” I mumbled.

Then I drew out what the paper had been guarding. A bundle of cloth. Leather cloth. No, a leather coat.

I unfurled it.

“I don’t believe it,” Drake whispered.

Tessa gasped. “Rellik’s turncoat…”

“Rellik’s what?” I said, cursing my ignorance. Silently, I vowed to begin reading more. Maybe I could find a book called 1,001 Things Every Non-Earthling Teenage Wizard Needs to Know.

“Rellik’s turncoat,” Drake said. “Rellik didn’t have a cloak. He had a turncoat. It had all kinds of magical powers.”

“Turncoat means traitor, genius,” I said.

Drake shook his head. “This thing is called a turncoat,” he insisted.

I threw on the coat and grinned. “Well, whatever it is, it fits perfect.”

It really did. It reminded me of one of those old leather motorcycle jackets that I’d seen in guy movies and the windows of antique shops. I could tell at once that there was something strange about it, and I opened it up to look at the inside. Sure enough, on the lining of both panels (where you would usually find the inside pockets) there were dozens of tiny silver knobs. They reminded me of the twist closures on my great-uncle Doug’s briefcase. I used to play with them incessantly as a child: twist it vertical to open, horizontal to close. It was a strange time to think of great-uncle Doug, but there you go.

I glanced up to see Tessa folding her arms, hiding a smile. “Rellik’s boots,” she said. “Rellik’s Turncoat. Simon Fayter, what will you do next?”

“Rellik’s Sword?” I guessed, winking at her.

I picked up the other thing in the trunk—a small black bottle with a cork in the top. There was a picture painted delicately on the side of it of a man lying on the ground, hands upraised, and another man standing above him, holding a club. It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

My watch beeped, signaling midnight.

“Uh oh.”

“What?” Drake said, voice thick with apprehension.

I hadn’t told them, of course. I didn’t make a habit of telling people about my luck.

“What is it?” Drake repeated.

I checked my watch, just to make sure. Yep. 12:00. I had just become unlucky, and I expected that getting out of Stores would not be as easy as getting in had been.

“What is that?” Drake said suddenly.

Now, I wore my watch on my left wrist, and the bottle was in my left hand. So when I turned my wrist, the bottle tipped, the cork popped off, and something small and black fell out after it. Except I didn’t realize it because I was looking at my watch and thinking about how unlucky I was.

“Is that an ant?” Tessa said, crouching down. “Drake, shine the torch down here. It is an ant. How could it have survived all this time?”

Still unaware of what they were talking about, I bent over, tipping the bottle again.

More bugs fell out of the bottle: ants, maggots, tiny beetles. They drained from the mouth of the bottle in a dark, undulating stream. Before I could react, a particularly large ant crawled out onto my thumb and bit me.

I squeaked and dropped the bottle.

I know what you’re thinking. That was an incredibly five-year-old-girlish thing to do. And you’re right. But even the most virile and courageous hero can accidentally react like a five-year-old girl when he is unlucky, and I was very unlucky just then.

The bottle shattered.

There had been a remarkable amount of bugs inside it, and now the mass of insects swelled. It didn’t take us long to realize that these were not normal insects. The mass doubled in size, then doubled again. It twisted and writhed, then stood upright and formed itself into the rough shape of a man.

“Uh oh,” I said again. I wanted to move, to get Drake and Tessa out of there, but I just kept watching. If you’ve ever seen a car crash coming, or some other horrible thing, and found yourself unable to look away, you know what I’m talking about.

The bugs burst into flame and turned to ash, so that the man himself was entirely made of ash, gray from head to foot. He was not looking at us. He was looking at some spot on the floor. He seemed dejected. Sad, even, and for a second I almost felt pity for him. Then he took a deep breath and shook himself, as if coming awake. He looked around in surprise, and his eyes rested on us.

Those terrible eyes. I’ll never forget them. I still see them sometimes right after I turn off a light, as if they live in the memory of darkness itself.

He smiled at me, and I was suddenly gripped with that inexplicable fear that makes children race up the stairs out of a dark basement.

“Run!” I said, and we did. We practically fell over each other scrambling down the ladder. We piled up against the locked door and I cursed myself as the gray man laughed from somewhere up above. I got it open, and we rushed into the tunnel. We didn’t even think about directions. We just ran.

I nearly knocked Hawk over when I hit him coming around a corner.

“Aha!” he said triumphantly. “I knew that you would sneak in here. Impulsivity is so predictable. Did it open for you?” He sounded giddy as a schoolboy at Christmas.

He gave a sharp intake of breath and touched my coat lightly. “It did open for you. Rellik’s turncoat. Good gracious! Of course, I had hoped it would be in there. Tell me, though. What else did you fin—”

An ashen gray hand appeared on Hawk’s shoulder.

He turned, and before he could say a word, before we could even warn him, the gray man stepped into him.

Stepped into Hawk.

Hawk turned on us. His eyes were a dark ash color instead of their normal silvery yellow. His face was a mask of rage. At his side, a sword appeared in his hand, bright white and wreathed in yellow fire. If I had known more, I would have recognized it as a knight’s sword, which only a member of the Circle of Eight can carry, and which they only reveal when they mean to kill.

He raised the sword, and in a horrible moment of clarity, I realized that he was going to destroy us. Hawk was being possessed. Controlled from the inside. That gray man had gotten inside him and was making him do this.

His arm froze in the act of sweeping the sword down. Hawk’s eyes flashed and suddenly he was himself again. With a speed that I would not have believed, he snatched the torch of Midnight Blue out of Drake’s hands and plunged it into his own chest.

He screamed, and the gray man stepped out of him.

The gray man stomped on the torch until it went out, and the only light we had was from the flickering fire of Hawk’s sword.

Hawk raised the sword, but he was weak and stumbled. He leaned against the wall for support, and the gray man turned away from him, toward us.

He advanced on me.

“The turncoat!” Hawk said weakly. “Use the turncoat!”

Tessa and Drake grabbed at it madly, pulling it open.

I stared at the myriad of little knobs, wondering what to do. Five of the knobs were larger than all the others, so I grabbed one of those. Bigger is better, right?

I looked up just in time to see Hawk bearing down on the gray man from behind, sword in one hand, the re-lit torch of Midnight Blue in the other. It was unclear which of them would reach us first.

“Now!” Hawk said.

I turned the knob, and the world turned with it: Hawk, the gray man, Stores, Skelligard, it all tilted on end. Then, with the tiny click of the knob falling into place, it all vanished.

7. The Human Pancake

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny.

—Napoleon Bonaparte71

Remember back in chapter three when I told you that I wasn’t at Skelligard for very long before I got broadsided by my destiny? This is what I was talking about.

It felt like getting hit by a train. The world was gone and something huge and invisible smashed into my body, flattening me. I went from boy to pancake to boy again in the blink of an eye.

It was totally dark. My feet were wet. I bent down and felt water around my knees.

“What did you do?” Drake said, sloshing around in the water. “It’s all wet!” His voice echoed around us.

“Sorry,” I said. “I pee when I’m nervous.”

“Are we still in Stores?” Tessa said.

“Shh! Someone’s coming.”

There were footsteps echoing around us, coming from everywhere at once. A single candle appeared several feet away, bobbing up and down through the air. Then it tipped, and a line of flame danced around the room, like some sort of flammable liquid in a trench that circumvented the space.

We were in a small cave with a clear pool at the center, which we were standing in. Whoever had brought the candle must have left, because there was no one in sight.

“I don’t think we’re in Stores anymore, Toto,” I whispered.

“Am I dead?” Drake said dramatically.

Tessa smacked him.

“Ouch!”

“Huh. Guess you’re still alive.”

“Then where are we?” Drake said. “What happened back there? What was that thing?”

“The Horror of Cain,” I said calmly. The painting on the bottle was of Cain and Abel. A Bible story, of all things, coming to life here on Skelligard. That’s why I hadn’t been able to figure it out it earlier. It seemed so out of place.

The others were silent. I knew they believed me. Master Ioden had told us that Rellik was famous for capturing the Horror of Cain, and Drake himself had said the trunk might contain monsters. If only I had listened.

“Now it’s back there,” Tessa said, frowning. “A murdering spirit. Free in Skelligard.”

“Hawk will catch it,” I said. They didn’t argue. They knew I was reaching. Maybe they knew how horrible I was suddenly feeling. I had made a mistake , and people were probably going to pay for it with their lives.

There were footsteps again. Another candle. This time, the girl who held it did not leave. I could tell it was a girl because no boy ever walked the way she did: graceful and silent as a cat. She looked a few years older than us, and when she unwrapped the black cloth around her head, dark hair dropped to her waist. She was tall, at least a foot taller than me, and on her cheek there was some sort of tattoo: a white oval that seemed to glow slightly in the dark.

She started to untie the strange shirt she was wearing, and I realized suddenly that she had come to bathe.

I tried to think of something better to say than “Hey, there’s boys in here,” but luckily Tessa saved us by clearing her throat.

The girl didn’t scream like Tessa would have. She didn’t sneeze like Drake or freeze, like me. She did a graceful backflip and threw something sharp at my head.

It missed, mostly. By which I mean that it scared the tar out of me and gave my perfect hair a nasty dent.

“Who are you?” she said. Her words were short and crisp, her accent exotic. She held a knife in each hand now.

“Simon Fayter,” I said, feeling my hair. “And I take it you’re a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ kind of girl?”

“Fayter,” she said quietly. Her eyes widened in shock and she pointed at my jacket with one of her knives. “Fayter?”

“Yep,” I said pompously, pretending to brush something off one of my sleeves. I had no idea what was going on, but she seemed to have heard of me, so I figured I might as well make a good impression.

“Fayter,” she said again, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear. “The ceremony has worked even before I have begun!” She pointed at the ceiling and we looked up.

Sure enough, there I was on the ceiling. At least, it sort of looked like me. It was a mosaic of gold and semi-precious stones depicting someone (Rellik, judging by the boots and the coat and the sword) giving a small red stone to a king. On the opposite side, there was another image depicting a queen giving the stone back to…me?

“It does look like you,” Drake admitted.

“Come, Fayter,” the girl said, beckoning for us to follow her.

“I don’t suppose we could just go back to Skelligard,” Drake said.

I was already moving after the girl. “You go,” I said easily. “I’m going to follow the mysterious ninja girl and see why she has an ancient painting of me.”

“Come on, Drake,” Tessa said, pulling him out of the pool.

Ninja girl gave us each a candle and we followed her out of the cave into a winding network of passages. For a second, I wondered if we actually were still in Stores.

“Excuse me,” I began, but the girl spun and clamped a hand over my mouth.

“Not here,” she hissed. She scowled at me as if I should have known better, then resumed her walk. I became aware that she was sneaking. She walked in a slight crouch and was being careful not to brush up against the walls of the tunnel.

A second later, she stopped so suddenly that I bumped into her. There was torchlight illuminating the tunnel ahead of us, coming closer.

“Ayia!” she swore under her breath. She doused the candles in a flurry of movement and then crouched low to the ground.

It was dark in the tunnels and we were right next to an intersection, so chances were slim that the guard would choose our tunnel to patrol, but it was an unlucky day, so he did.

He cried out when he saw us, but before he could draw his sword, our ninja girl was on him. She sort of flew through the air, I think. It all happened so fast. A second later he was on the ground, folded in half, with his hands and feet bound together with his belt. With a deft move, she cut part of his shirt away and stuffed it in his mouth to keep him quiet. “We run now,” she said calmly, then sprinted away.

“Dang,” Drake said.

“Dang,” I agreed.

“Ugh! Come on!” Tessa pulled us into a run, and we struggled to keep up with Ninja Girl as she wove her way through the tunnels.

A minute later, winded and extremely confused, we fell out of the mouth of a cave and slid down something hard. It was night, and there were two moons in the sky, one white like ours, the other a pale yellow.

We landed on the top of the stone battlement of a massive fortress built into the side of a mountain. Behind us, I could see the cave we had come from.

“Did you see the moons?” Drake said excitedly. “I think this is Daru. I can’t believe it, but I think that’s where we are.”

“THERE!” a man called. A bell rang. Once, then again.

“Hurry,” she said. “Climb.” She pointed to a rope ladder hanging over the edge of the battlement.

Drake sneezed. He hated heights. He did not get the chance to face his fear that night, though. Guards poured out of the fortress and surrounded us in less time than it took you to read this sentence. In a frightening turn of events, several of the guards were clearly minotaurs.

“Can you defeat them?” the girl asked me, indicating the men.

I thought she was joking for a second and let out a short laugh, but her eyes were serious.

“No,” I said incredulously. “Can you?” There were easily twelve of them now, closing in on us with swords and pikes.

“Maybe,” she said. “But I would also die.” She gave me a questioning look, and I realized that she was offering to sacrifice herself so that we could escape.

The guards were in a tight circle now, but they were keeping back, clearly cautious of our new friend.

I shook my head. “You go.” I didn’t doubt that she could escape on her own. “We will go back.”

She nodded. “You must promise to return, or I will die so that you may stay.”

“I promise, then.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “We need you.” Then she leapt lightly over the wall and was gone.

There was a shout from the guards, but I did not look up. I locked arms with Tessa and Drake and turned the silver knob once more, hoping beyond hope that it would take us back.

8. Lightning in the Night

Betray: To deliver to an enemy by treachery

—Webster’s Dictionary72

It didn’t.

I turned and turned the knob and nothing happened. Before long, the guards must have realized that they had nothing to fear from us, because they began to lower their weapons.

So I tried another knob.

I turned it and felt the now familiar stirring of butterflies in my belly. Then I was struck by lightning.

Out of the clear night, a bolt of blue lightning struck my coat (which somehow didn’t hurt at all) and was then reflected forward in a wide, dazzling arc. It electrified several guards, throwing them into the air.73

I raised my hands in the most wizardly way possible and said, “The next man to touch us gets it twice as bad!”

“Wait,” a thick voice said. It was a minotaur, eight feet tall, and by the look at him, the leader of the guards. For all his size, he seemed almost contrite after the lightning. “We have no desire to trouble such a great magician.”

“Excellent,” I said. “We’ll just be going, then.” I motioned to Tessa and she started down the rope ladder, disappearing from view.

Several of the minotaurs growled and I swung back around, arms raised. The human guards bolted, but the six minotaurs held their ground. Their fur spilled out over their shining armor and their horns glinted in the light of the double moons. They looked wary but determined.

“We will not let you leave with that defector,” their leader said. “The rebellion has never taken a minotaur alive. We will not stand the shame of it. We are the Kundraka Clan, and we serve Mistress Zee proudly! We will not let another clan bring shame upon the Mistress.”

I glanced at Drake. “Defector?” Then it hit me. Rebellion. There was obviously some sort of war going on. Ninja Girl on one side and these minotaurs on the other. They probably thought Drake was one of them, that he had helped us up here.

“This is no defector,” I said, putting a hand on Drake’s shoulder. “This is Prince Drakus of the Golgoth Clan. He has come with me from a distant world to help me in a search for new magical powers.”

The minotaurs whispered to each other in their own language, and their leader nodded. “We know of the Golgoth Clan,” he said. They gave a slight bow. “You must be a fearsome warrior, Prince Drakus, to be chosen for such a mission even before your kulraka. But we cannot let you fight for the rebellion. Mistress Zee would see it as a betrayal if a minotaur fought against her.”

I turned to Drake and whispered, “Maybe you should stay and, you know, infiltrate the minotaurs. We can come back for you later.”

“What?” he hissed. “Are you insane? And why did you tell them I’m a prince?”

I ignored him, turning back to the minotaurs. I tried the lightning knob again, but nothing happened, so I raised my hands and said, “Prince Drakus is my friend. I thought you said you did not wish to trouble a magician.”

The leader nodded. “We do not want to, but we will fight you if we must. If you kill us, you may take him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine,” I said, giving Drake a little push toward them. “You can have him. But I must warn you not to anger him. He is as fierce as a wounded bear when provoked.”

“Wait!” Drake said. His face was a mixture of shock and betrayal. “Simon!”

But I was already gone.

“Where’s Drake?” Tessa asked when I had reached the ground. We were standing on a patch of grass surrounded by trees.

“I gave him to the minotaurs.”

“WHAT?”

I raised my hands defensively. “They weren’t going to let us go. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not that, you idiot. Poor little Drake…they’ll eat him alive!” She looked like she might slap me, so I grabbed her arms.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “They think he’s a fierce warrior prince from the Golgoth Clan. You remember? Drake said they were famous. He’ll be fine. Hey, minotaurs don’t really eat their own kind, do they?”

She blinked in confusion. “They think Drake’s a warrior?”

I nodded. “See? They’re not so bright. Drake’s ten times smarter than any of them. He’ll be fine. Plus it might be good to have a man on the inside. Anyway, did you see that lightning? I guess that explains the turncoat thing.”

“The what?”

“You know, because you turn the knobs, and stuff happens. Turncoat.”

Tessa faked a look of amazement. “Did you just figure that out?”

“Just call me Captain Obvious,” I muttered.

Just then, several black-clothed figures slipped from the trees and surrounded us. Among them was Ninja Girl, who pointed at me. A second, shorter woman gave me a critical look, then whispered, “This Captain Obvious74 is the Fayter? He does not have the look of a captain or a soldier at all. Let alone a Fayter.”

“I’m not a captain!” I said.

The shorter woman rounded on me. “Then why did you call yourself one? What are you hiding?”

“I didn’t! I mean—agh—I’m not hiding anything.”

“We shall see,” she said. “You will come with us.”

“Where?” Tessa said cautiously.

“We will take you to the one we follow. We live in hiding, and are ever sought after by our enemies. Therefore we must travel carefully, and not be tracked. If our home were to be discovered, we would be at the mercy of our enemies.” With that, she darted back into the woods, and the rest of us followed. Two of the women ran behind me and Tessa, jabbing us in the back with the butts of their short spears if we went too slowly. I wasn’t sure if we were guests or prisoners.

As we ran I noticed that the women had a strangely noble look about them. Apart from the smallest one, they all had that white oval on their face. Some on their cheeks, some on their foreheads. They were all young women, none past twenty, and they all moved with the same deadly grace. They never tripped over branches or rocks. They barely made any noise moving through the forest. In fact, since I had Rellik’s boots on, the only person who made any noise as we walked was Tessa.

Okay, I made some noise, too, but only because my head was itching. Right on the sides. I wondered if I had gotten into something.

Finally we came to an overgrown hill in the center of the forest, and they pulled aside a swatch of bushes to reveal the mouth of a cave.

“Can you see in the dark?” Ninja Girl asked.

I shook my head.

“Hold on, then,” she said, and she put my hands on her shoulders. Then she started into the darkness of the cave. Behind us, I could hear the others following with Tessa.

After a few minutes, during which I was constantly afraid of bumping my head against unseen stalactites, our little passage opened abruptly to a large, torch-lit chamber. Stalactites hung from above, reflecting the flickering light in an eerie range of twilight color.

The women led us around the huge chamber, weaving through stands of stalagmites and small groups of people who were sewing clothes, canning vegetables, tending children, making armor, and sharpening swords. A handful of people had the same strange, noble grace of the women we had met (slight of frame, elegant, dangerous). These people all wore black as well. But for the most part, the people looked normal. Tired, and a little scared, but normal.

Finally they brought us to the very end of the room, where a simple oak throne stood in front of two large white stone slabs set into the wall. The white stones were intricately carved and reminded me vaguely of the ivory table where Ioden had taught his lesson. The smallest, youngest woman75 (the one without the oval mark) sat down on the throne and Ninja Girl moved to stand beside her.

Ninja Girl gestured to the seated woman. “This is Kai Ortanda, exiled leader of the rebellion, and rightful queen of Daru.” She pointed to us. “Your Majesty, these are the people I met in the sacred cave. This is Captain Simon Obvious.”

I smacked my face in frustration. She frowned at me, then continued.

“He matches the description of the Fayter that Rellik prophesied would come to us.”

Kai nodded, considering us thoughtfully. “How did you and your woman come to Daru, Captain?” Her voice was low and precise, like everything else about her.

Tessa growled. Evidently she didn’t like being called my ‘woman.’ (Go figure.) I wrestled my frustration down and decided to play it cool. If these people thought I was a captain, or a Fayter, why should I argue? I gestured impressively. “I sensed that I was needed…and came.”

She rolled her eyes. “He is not the Fayter. He is a child. His head is too big for his body.”

Tessa laughed. She gave a surprisingly delicate bow and then said, “He does have a big head, Your Majesty, but he is a Fayter. We didn’t mean to enter your world. We are students at Skelligard, and we were in great danger when Simon here used his coat for the first time to save us. For some reason, it brought us here.”

I glared at Tessa. Big head? Accidentally came here? Why would the queen believe a story like that?

But the queen was nodding. “That,” she said slowly, “is more like it. Fate has brought the Fayter to us.” She scowled. “It would have been better if fate had waited for you to grow up first, but beggars cannot be choosers.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “Now can I ask you a question? What was your maid here doing in that cave where she found us?”

The queen scowled. “This is no maid. She is an Antediluvian.76 Among our people, she is known as the Tike. Fiercest of warriors, and captain of my personal guard.”

“My apologies,” I said with a bow. “What was the Tike doing bathing in a cave?”

The corner of the queen’s mouth quirked in a half smile. “It is tradition for a lady to bathe in the sacred cave in times of great danger. It brings luck to her people.”

“Her people?” I said. “Wouldn’t that make her the queen, then?” I pointed at Ninja Girl. “I suppose she’s the real queen, and you’re the Tike. Am I right?”77

The girl on the throne looked shocked. Then she rose to her feet slowly. Meanwhile, Ninja Girl broke into a wry smile. “I told you, Cora,” she said. “This is no mere child. He is the Fayter.”

“Perhaps, Your Majesty,” the shorter girl said, and she moved aside so Ninja Girl—that is, Queen Kai—could sit on the throne.

“You see much for one so young,” Kai said, addressing me again.

“I have 20/20 vision.”78

“Right,” Tessa said, butting in. “Since we’re all revealing our secret identities, I’d like to point out that Captain Obvious here is really just Simon. Not Captain anything. And I’m Tessa. Not his woman—or anyone else’s, for that matter—just Tessa. And to be honest, we didn’t mean to come here, but Simon is a Fayter, and if we can help you, we will.”

Kai nodded. “That was well said, and I believe you. I must now tell you something of our people: It was a great risk for me to climb into the citadel today and bathe in the sacred cave. My family has lived there for generations, but the fortress is now under Mistress Zee’s control, and she would kill me just for stepping foot inside. Many did not wish me to go.” She glanced at the shorter girl beside her. “But I was stubborn. I believed that the ancient tradition would bring me luck, and it has brought me you.”

She clapped her hands, and servants appeared carrying chairs and tables.

“You will dine with me now,” Kai said. “And you, Simon, will tell me of your powers. Then I will decide how I might use you to my advantage.”

We ate at a low pine table that they set right up next to Kai’s throne. I sat across from the queen and the Tike. The latter ate nothing. She just stared at me and held her knife firmly. Exactly what I had done to offend her was a mystery to me, but I didn’t care much. The queen liked me.

The meal was surprisingly bland for a queen’s table: water and porridge, with a thin slice of pork on the side. As we ate, the queen told me her story. Several months ago, a powerful female wizard had come out of the woods near her castle. She called herself Mistress Zee. She was young, not more than fifteen, but her magic was strong, and she commanded an intimidating army of minotaurs. They took the castle in a single night and killed all of Kai’s soldiers. Minotaur patrols began going out at night, burning fields and spoiling crops.

“Soon,” Kai said in disgust, “the only food left will be in the castle’s stores.”

“What’s the point of starving everyone to death?” I asked. “I mean, no offense, but if you’re all dead, who will this Mistress Zee have to rule over and oppress?”

The queen shook her head. “It is not about starving us. It is about power. If the food is gone, we will have no choice but surrender to her in exchange for food from the castle’s stores. We can replant in the spring, but we will not have enough to get us through the winter without her help, and I will not let our children starve to death. She knows this. When we come begging for food, she will demand our weapons, our lands, our compliance.”

“And your head,” the Tike said darkly.

The queen chuckled. “Perhaps. But that will not happen. We will defeat this wizard long before she has a chance to starve our people.” She brightened. “Our hope was dim, but now you have come. Please. Tell me of your powers. Do you already have a plan to aid us?”

The Tike laughed. “Do not ask him. He thinks much of himself. Ask Tessa.”

“I do not—” I began, but Tessa cut me off.

“He doesn’t really have any powers,” she said.

“Would you stop it?” I snapped. “You’re not helping.”

“Well,” she amended, “I guess he does seem to have some powers now that he’s got Rellik’s coat.”

“Seem to?” I said incredulously. “I made a crazy lightning cloud attack a bunch of minotaurs like an hour ago!”

“Can you show us this power?” Kai asked.

I glowered. “Well, no. The lightning thing only works once, apparently.”

“Once?” the Tike asked icily. “Once a day? Once an hour? Once a year?”

I scratched my head, distracted. “What?” I said. Argh! Why was I so itchy? If this kept up I would have to ask for something to put on it.

“Simon,” the queen said seriously, “you are not the powerful savior that I hoped for when I saw you.” She waited for me to argue, but for once in my life, I was feeling a twinge of humility.79 “Still, you were brought to us for a reason, and I will trust the providence of fate. I went to the sacred cave seeking a miracle. Who am I to argue with what fate has provided.” She paused for a moment. “In three days’ time, I will challenge Mistress Zee to mortal combat.”

“Really?” I said in surprise. “How do you know she won’t just have you shot when you show up to fight her?”

The Tike gave a low laugh. “You know nothing of our ways, Fayter. Our society is based on honor. If Zee were to refuse a personal challenge from the queen, the people would be outraged. Even if they managed to kill those of us here, the entire world would rise up against her in rebellion.”

“You’re going to fight her. A wizard?” Tessa said. “Do you have magic?”

The queen shook her head. “I will not fight her myself.” She looked at me gravely. “You will be my champion.”

The Tike, who had finally taken her first drink of the fruit juice, choked on it. “WHAT? You want him to fight for you? Respectfully, my queen, you err in this decision. This boy has clearly not fought a day in his life. If you need proof, let me fight him now. Better he die now than when he is acting as your champion.”

I froze. It wasn’t the words that scared me, but her casual tone, as if she was discussing which shoes went better with her shirt.

Kai sighed. “No, Cora. I forbid you to kill him.”

“Then let me cut off his thumbs. Surely then you will see that he is not fit to represent you.”

“I don’t want you to harm him in any way,” the queen said flatly. “As you know, after the challenge is issued, he will have to defeat Zee’s champion to win the right to fight her personally. That is the tradition, and we will let that battle be his test. If he fails it, you may fight in his place. Until then, I want you to help him. You will do what you can to prepare him for battle in three days.”

The Tike’s mouth snapped shut in defiant silence. All her earlier grace had vanished, replaced by silent rage. In her right hand, the knife spun restlessly. I wondered if she knew how to throw it at me. The odds seemed pretty good.

“He doesn’t seem anything like Rellik,” she said softly. “Do you really think he is a Fayter?”

“I do,” the queen said.

“Hold on,” I said. “What do you mean I don’t seem like Rellik? You mean in the paintings?”

The Tike snorted. “There are some among us who still remember when Rellik came to defeat the giant.”

I felt my jaw drop. “But if that’s true, you must be over a thousand years old!”

Tessa slapped my arm.

The Tike gave me a sour grin. “The few who remember him are far, far older than that, but since you mention it, I am over a thousand years old. And I’ve been fighting, practicing my craft all that time. How long have you been the Fayter? A week?”

“More like a day,” Tessa said.

“Not helping,” I whispered.

“Nevertheless,” the queen said with a tone of finality, “Simon Fayter will be my champion.” She rose from the table and we followed suit. “I suggest you teach him well, Cora. Our fate is in his hands.”

I gave the Tike a playful smile.

She pursed her lips. “We’re all going to die.”

9. The Pants Thief

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

—Proverbs 16:1880

My training began that night after everyone had gone to bed. The Tike brought me and Tessa back into the large central chamber, which was now empty, and Tessa showed her what the two of us had done. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that we should share all our secrets with the Tike, but Tessa liked her and wisely argued that since she was in charge of helping us, we had to trust her.

“It’s a diagram of the turncoat, see?” Tessa explained, unfolding the large piece of paper we had been working on for the last hour. The paper showed five rows (labeled A-E) of ten knobs (numbered 1-10). They corresponded with the fifty knobs that we had found inside my coat.

“Should we ask her?” I said to Tessa.

“Ask me what?” the Tike said.

“We found something interesting when we were examining the turncoat and making the diagram,” Tessa said.

I opened the coat and indicated the five knobs on the bottom of the right panel. They were bigger than the others, and they each had a small leather pocket beneath them. A leather flap closed them, and the knobs served as fasteners to keep them shut.

I opened the E6 pocket and drew out a small stone. It was the color of blood and partially transparent.

“Ayia!” the Tike exclaimed, clamping a hand over her mouth. “A bloodstone!”

“See?” Tessa said. “Told you.”

Tessa had been sure that it was a bloodstone the second we found it, and it made sense, as they were supposed to be incredibly powerful. The knob on the E6 pocket had brought us to Daru in the first place, which seemed like an impressive feat of magic.

“Are you sure that’s what it is?” I asked.

The Tike nodded. “When Rellik defeated Tuloth the Giant, he took from him a stone just like this one.” She looked at me. “These stones gave Rellik great power. You should be careful with it.”

I nodded and tucked the stone back into the E6 pocket.

After promising to be careful with the stone, we told the Tike the rest of our plan, which was to experiment with the knobs and learn what they did. If they all held magic as powerful as the lightning, then I might not be in such bad shape after all.

To my surprise, the Tike approved of this.

“Good,” she said. “Yes. Good. I was afraid you would ask me to teach you how to fight. This is better. Still, every champion needs a weapon.” She held up a plain silver dagger. It was half the length of my forearm and came in a brown leather scabbard.

“This is called a dagger,” she said, speaking slowly, as if I were a particularly dense child. She drew it out and indicated the needle-like tip. “This end goes in your enemy.” She indicated the handle. “This end you hold in your hand.” She sheathed it and handed it to me. “The dagger is a good weapon for you. Large enough to hurt an enemy. Small enough that you will not accidentally chop off your leg.”

“Thank you, Cora,” I said, using the name the queen had called her. I could sense it was the wrong thing to do, but she was being snooty with me.

The Tike frowned.

A couple minutes later, I regained consciousness. Tessa was pouring water on my head and calling my name. “Wha…happened?” I mumbled.

“She knocked you out, genius,” Tessa said kindly. “She moved so fast, I didn’t really see it. Now try not to make her mad again, okay?”

“Right.” I got to my feet unsteadily. The Tike was standing right where I’d left her.

“Rule number one of fighting,” she said. “Always pay attention.”

I nodded.

“Rule number two of fighting. Address me as Tike.”

I nodded again. “Can I ask why the queen—”

“The queen is the only fighter on Daru with enough skill to meet me in battle,” the Tike said. “She may call me what she likes. You will call me what I like. Now, we will begin. I will attack you, and you will turn your first knob.

“You’re going to attack me?” I said uneasily.

“Of course. I am to prepare you for battle.” She cocked her head. “Do not worry. I will not hurt you. I will only humiliate you.”

“Yeah?” I said, wondering what she meant.

“Yes. You have too much pride. You need humiliation.”

“You can say that again,” Tessa mumbled. She had settled herself down at the table with our paper and a pen, ready to take notes.

“Whatever,” I said, reaching into the turncoat to grab knob A1. “Go ahead.”

The Tike stepped forward and I turned A1. Butterflies attacked my navel, and something wet and slimy filled my hand. Without thinking, I swung at the Tike’s face. She twisted and there was a painful tug on my wrist. Then my hand was empty, and a second later she slapped me in the face with a salmon.

“What the…” I began, but the Tike had already tossed it into a nearby pot.

“It was a fish,” she said. “You made a fish.”

“A1,” Tessa said, “produces a fish. Do you think it summoned the fish from somewhere or made it out of thin air?” She scratched something else down. “Turn it again.”

Nothing happened.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose it only works once, just like the first knob you turned.”

“And the lightning one,” I pointed out. “I tried that one again and it didn’t work either. I just hope these things work at least once a day, otherwise they won’t be much use after tonight…Hey, where’s my shoe?”

“Here,” the Tike said, waving it casually in front of her. “This is what will happen when you lose. I will take something.”

Before I could think what to say to that, she told me to prepare myself. I reached into the coat and turned A2, and she attacked. This time I tried to shout at her as a distraction while diving to the side. But instead of shouting, I made a soft, gurgling noise in my throat and fell over. In response to the sound I made, the fish hopped out of the pot and flopped over to me, wiggling frantically.

“It says it needs water!” I said.

“Tell it I’m getting some,” the Tike said.

Without thinking, I told the fish just that, and once again heard a gurgling noise escape my throat. I froze.

“A2,” Tessa said calmly, “makes you talk to fish.” She pressed the pen to her chin thoughtfully. “Or maybe all animals? I mean, the fish is the only animal around. We’ll have to try that one again another time.”

“Okay,” I said, picking up the fish and dropping it in a pot of water the Tike was holding out. I was glad to hear my normal voice again. “Yes, Tike, I see you have my other shoe. Okay, I’m ready for round three.”

The Tike grinned at me and picked up a large wooden spoon from the table, twirling it thoughtfully.

“Please don’t hit me with that,” I said with as much dignity as possible.

She grinned, then lunged for me. I turned A3, and then (and I’m extremely proud of this achievement) I managed to touch the spoon with one finger as it came around to smack my backside.

When my finger touched it, the spoon shattered with a loud crack. The splinters fell to the floor and turned to fine wooden dust.

We all stared at it.

“Um, okay,” Tessa said. “A3 destroys the next thing you touch. Or maybe it’s just wooden things? This is going to take a lot of testing. Touch something else. Just…not me.”

I touched an empty wooden mug and nothing happened. We all relaxed.

“This may be useful in a fight,” the Tike said thoughtfully, tossing my sock aside. I glanced down. I hadn’t even felt her remove it. “Not so much with the talking to fish, but this is good.” She was rubbing her hands, clearly thinking the same thing I was: It’s a good thing I’d touched the spoon and not her hand. Or her face.

“Ready for round four?” I asked. She hesitated for half a second, then agreed.

She came at me again, and I turned A4. Nothing happened, and she slapped me clean in the face and walked away, somehow, with my other sock.

I opened my mouth to say something rude and instead what came out was: “Seventy-eight degrees and sunny. Light wind from the southeast and a fifteen percent chance of rain in the afternoon.”

“What’s the nighttime low going to be tomorrow?” Tessa asked.

I opened my mouth to say, “How should I know?” But instead I said, “Forty-two degrees and balmy,” in an annoying television voice that made me think of toupees and fake teeth.

“A4,” Tessa chimed, “predicts the weather in a creepy stalker voice.”

“That’s actually going to be handy,” I said pleasantly.

“Not in a fight,” the Tike pointed out. “Here I come.”

I turned A5 and instantly lost consciousness.

A half an hour later, when I had awakened fully and discovered that I no longer had a shirt, Tessa informed me that I had started snoring before I hit the ground.

“A5,” she said. “Encourages sleep.”

“Encourages?” I mumbled. “Yeah. Like a sledgehammer encourages a thumbtack.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” The Tike was handing me back the turncoat, which she had evidently removed to get to my shirt. When I had it back in place I said, “Come on, Tike. I dare you to steal my pants.81 I mean, let’s be honest. Do you really think—”

She moved like lightning, but I was ready for her. I turned B1 and hopped backward, meaning to distance myself from her hands. Halfway through my hop, however, I flew straight up, thirty feet into the air.

If I had managed to keep my head, I’m sure I would have landed on my feet like the cool cat I am and it all would have been very impressive. Unfortunately, I completely lost my composure at the height of the jump, squealed like a stuck pig, and latched on to a large stalactite, clinging on for dear life like a frantic infant chimp.

There I was, wearing nothing but the turncoat and my bright red Iron Man boxers, legs dangling thirty feet above the Tike, who was holding my jeans.

She nodded to herself. “This could be very useful in a fight.”

“GET ME DOWN!” I screamed. “I’M GONNA DIE!”

“Let go,” Tessa called up. “If the coat makes you jump that high, it has to help you land, too, or it would be too dangerous.”

I wasn’t sure that made sense, but it sounded as good as anything, especially since I couldn’t hold on any longer. I let go and dropped gracefully, slowing as I neared the ground and landing lightly on the balls of my feet.

The Tike actually smiled at me. “Very good. We have found two useful fighting techniques.” She glanced down, and her expression became curious. “Who is that armored soldier on your underclothes? Is he a part of your religion? Does his prowess in battle lend you strength?”

“Agh!” I said, turning away and thrusting out a hand. “Give me back my pants!”

“I agree with Simon,” Tessa said seriously.

“Thank you!”

The Tike shrugged and handed them over. “Put them on, then,” she said. “We have found out six magics. We will find out six more and then retire for the night.”

And so it went on, exactly like before.82 Every time I turned a knob, I felt the familiar tickle in my stomach that Hawk had called a tremor. I wondered vaguely if the turncoat was somehow channeling my magic, or if just being around the turncoat’s magic was stimulating my own. Either way, any activity was good in my book.

B2 made the next words I spoke sound like pure genius. The Tike stole my shoe, and instead of calling her a grumpy elf ninja (like I was trying to do) I spoke a single, glorious sentence that thanked her, complimented her, promised respect, and acknowledged her noble character all at once.83 If I could talk to women like that every day, I could rule the world.84

B3 made me speak in rhyming verse. Tessa thought it was hilarious, and she had a long, annoying conversation with the Tike about whether or not it was a viable defensive tool. The Tike argued that it was not, but Tessa was convinced you could torture someone to death with bad poetry, especially mine.

B4 gave me five precious seconds of insane fighting skills. My mind was taken over completely by pure instinct, and my hands moved as if they’d been doing it a thousand years. I grappled competently with the Tike, threw her, and actually pinned her momentarily before my five seconds of glory ran out. After which she stole my sock and used it to tie my feet behind my head until I was sufficiently humble again. Still, everyone was impressed by this new breakthrough. As long as the fight didn’t last for more than five seconds, I was golden.

B5 made my hair grow eighteen inches in about 1.5 seconds.85 Tessa almost died from laughter, and the Tike told me I was the prettiest boy on Daru. We had to stop to trim and shave it before Tessa would agree to continue. She said she wouldn’t be able to concentrate otherwise.

B6 made me invisible. Kind of. Actually, it was more like being a two-legged super-chameleon. I wasn’t truly invisible, I just blended in to my surroundings so perfectly that it was almost impossible to spot me, even when I was moving, and even if you were looking directly at me. If I was being perfectly still, neither Tessa nor the Tike could see me at all.

B7 gave me near-fatal halitosis.86 Fatal for others, I mean. To her credit, after I accidentally breathed in her face, the Tike still managed to steal my pants before vomiting violently into a nearby bucket (poisoning the salmon). The poor girl lost her cookies repeatedly into that bucket before declaring that we had discovered the most powerful weapon yet. I felt bad for her. She didn’t deserve it.87

After this, the Tike said we were done for the night, but I wasn’t ready. There was one other thing I had been wanting to try. I couldn’t stop thinking about the E6 knob, which had started this whole thing. What would happen if I turned the other pocket knobs? Nothing, I guessed, unless I put something in the pockets first. I was determined to experiment with E7. The problem was deciding what to put in the pocket. E6 obviously worked with the bloodstone, but without knowing what each knob did beforehand, it might be very easy to choose the wrong sort of object for the pocket and have nothing happen. Tessa pointed out that if this happened, we likely wouldn’t be able to try again until the next day.

Tessa wanted to put a pebble into it. I wanted to put in one of Tessa’s hairs. The Tike just wanted to go to bed. When we pressed her for her opinion too hard, she offered to barf in it.

“What if it makes you take on properties of the object you put in there?” Tessa asked.

“Then I’ll become incredibly beautiful,” I said, trying flattery. “Come on, give me one of your hairs.”

“What if it sets whatever you put in there on fire?” Tessa asked, folding her arms across her chest.

I stopped, eyeing her hair with a new sense of caution. “I see your point. But I still don’t want to use a pebble. What if it has to be a living thing to work?”

“Hair isn’t alive, genius.”

Eventually we decided to use a scale from the half-drowned88 vomit-poisoned salmon. Technically it was a living thing, but if we ended up killing it accidentally…well, that salmon was on its last leg anyway.89

I put the scale in the E7 pocket, fastened the flap over the knob, and turned.

A bright gold line appeared in front of me. It was as thick around as my thumb and started in the center of my chest and ran right into the fish bucket. When I walked over to it, I saw that the line ran right to the fish itself. No one else could see anything, so without telling her what was happening, I had Tessa hide the fish in various places around the room while I closed my eyes. Each time, I walked right to it, and finally, when I could sense that her frustration was at the breaking point, I told her how it worked.

As far as I was concerned, it was the single most important power we had discovered all night. And not because I lose my keys all the time (although that’s probably what you would use it for most). It’s because deep down, I wasn’t actually a horrible friend.

“Tike, what time is it here?” I asked as she led us back to our rooms. I’d been wondering about that for a while. My watch said 6:49 am, but that was Skelligard time.

“Eleven something,” the Tike said wearily. “Nearly the new day.” Her face was still slightly green from my breath bomb. We had made it to our rooms, so she bade us goodnight and left us alone.

“Do you think the knobs reset at midnight?” Tessa asked, voicing my own question.

I shrugged, pretending not to be that interested. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” I said. “If it takes twenty-four hours between each use, or if they only work once a week, or once a month, then they won’t work till at least tomorrow night.”

She retired to her room. “Oh,” she said, popping her head back out. “You should probably memorize this.” She handed me the turncoat diagram and I opened it automatically.

“You gave them all nicknames,” I said, surprised.

She nodded, yawning hugely. “I thought it would make it easier to memorize.”

“It will,” I said honestly and smiled at her. “See you in the morning?”

She smiled weakly. “Do you think Drake’s okay?”

I nodded. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be just fine.” I scratched my head again. It was getting worse. I knew why, too.

I must help those I can. Well, I wasn’t helping Drake very much right now, was I? But that was about to change.

After Tessa was in bed, I locked myself in my room and reset my watch to 11:30 pm. It was probably past that already, but I wanted to be on the safe side. Then I waited. And waited.

While I waited, I opened the diagram again and reviewed Tessa’s nicknames for the thirteen knobs we had tested that night.

A1. Fish

A2. Whisper

A3. Curse

A4. Forecast

A5. Nap

B1. Leap

B2. Silvertongue

B3. Poet

B4. Ninja

B5. Hair

C1. Chameleon

C2. Breath

D6. Lightning (discovered previously)

E6. Travel

E7. Path

Most of them were pretty well chosen. I crossed out C2 and changed it to Stink, then committed their positions and uses to memory.

At 12:01, I turned A4 and found myself saying “Seventy-eight degrees and sunny. Light wind from the southeast and a fifteen percent chance of rain in the afternoon.”

I grinned. Once a day, then, and it reset at midnight wherever I was. Deep down, that is what I had expected all along. It just felt right.

I briefly considered going back to Skelligard. The E6 knob would probably take me back now. But I couldn’t just leave without my friends. And there was the matter of my new epic adventure to think about.

I took off my shirt, laid it on the bed, and searched every square inch of it, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. Then, for the first time that night, I took my pants off voluntarily. I laid them out next to my shirt and carefully searched them from top to bottom. I turned out all the pockets. When I unrolled my left pants cuff, I found what I was looking for: a single, curly, red minotaur hair.90

Very carefully, I placed it in the E7 pocket and turned the knob. Instantly, the golden line sprouted from my chest, pointing at the door, down the hall, out of the caves, across the forest, and into the fortress. To Drake.

See? Told you I was a good friend.

10. Super Spy

The name’s Bond. James Bond.

—Ian Fleming91

In retrospect, striking out on my own in the dead of night on a strange planet to infiltrate an enemy stronghold guarded by an evil sorceress probably wasn’t the best idea. Then again, thirteen-year-olds are rarely rational. And that’s normal thirteen-year-olds. I was an over-confident, self-centered, prideful genius attempting to live up to an ancient prophecy of my own magnificence—I was doomed.

It didn’t take me long to get back to the fortress. By the time I was halfway there, the incessant head itch had disappeared. Thank goodness. I had expected the trip to require a lot more sneaking past guards and what not, but it didn’t. Maybe Path just led me around them. Still, things became more complicated once I arrived at the fortress. The rope ladder had been cut down (probably yesterday, when I was unlucky), so I had to find a different way up. Thank goodness I could jump thirty feet high now.

After I was on the wall, I had to slow down. I didn’t want to use up all my powers right away, so I waited and watched. I timed the changing of the guards perfectly, slipped into the fortress, then hid behind window shutters, draperies, suits of armor, and so on till I found my way to Drake. If it had been daylight, it would have been significantly more difficult, but at night, when the fortress was only guarded by a handful of men, it was easy.

Until I got to Drake’s room. The hallway door was guarded by the biggest, hairiest minotaur I’d ever seen: nine feet tall with horns as wide as a Volkswagen and a head like an anvil. I spotted him around the corner and saw his nostrils flare. He hadn’t seen me, but he could smell me. When was the last time I showered? Tuesday? I ducked behind the corner just before his eyes flicked in my direction. When I got up the courage to sneak another peek, he was on his feet, holding a gleaming steel warhammer.

I did a quick mental inventory of my powers. I considered using Chameleon, but I doubted that it would work. Even if I moved slowly enough that he couldn’t see me at all, well, like I said, it had been three days since I’d showered, not taking into account whatever time zones we crossed changing planets, and I’d been running around a lot, dodging monsters and stuff. I smelled manly.

Warrior was my next best bet, but even with five seconds of ninja prowess, I didn’t like my chances. That was a big minotaur. And his hammer was very shiny.92

I risked another peek. He was still looking down my end of the hallway. He rolled his massive shoulders restlessly and as he did so, something silver tumbled out from behind his armor.

It was a fish pendant, just like the one Drake wore. Just then, I had a characteristic stroke of brilliance.

I turned C1 (Chameleon) and went invisible. Then I turned A1 (Fish) and held on as a large salmon wriggled in my invisible hands. I rubbed myself all over with the fish so that the minotaur wouldn’t be able to smell me.93 Then I held my salmon aloft and stepped out into the hallway.

“I have heard your prayers, my child,” I said in a deep female voice.94

“I am Scayla, first of all fishes, and I have heard your prayers.” I swirled the salmon through the air gracefully, and the big minotaur dropped to his knees and hid his face behind his hands.

“Oh, Scayla,” he said in a thick guttural accent, “I am not worthy to see your shining face.”

“That is right,” I agreed. “And you are not worthy to guard Prince Drakus of the Golgoths. Be gone, and trouble me no longer with your presence. I must speak now to my worthy subject, Prince Drakus. See to it that we are not disturbed.”

The minotaur leapt from his knees and bolted away, howling a prayer.

Just then, Drake opened his door and peered into the hallway.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, striding into his room. “Brought you a salmon!”

“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” Drake demanded when I had finished telling him what had happened. “You can’t impersonate a god!”

“Actually, I’m pretty good at it,” I said. “Your guard was very impressed.”

“He’s going to tell everyone!” Drake groaned.

“Exactly. Tomorrow you will be the most famous minotaur in this place. And you’ll be safe. No one will lay a finger on you if they think Scayla might destroy them for it.”

It sounded strange, but deep down I knew this was the right way to look at things. When I finished saying these words, my codex became noticeably warmer for a minute, and I wondered if this was the magical “wealth” that Drake had told me about before.

Drake fingered his silver fish pendant nervously. “Scayla, forgive my friend for his blasphemy,” he muttered. “Scayla, forgive me for having blasphemous friends.”

I patted him on the back. “I wouldn’t worry about it. How do you know Scayla isn’t responsible for giving me the power to summon a fish? I mean, that’s her thing, right?”

Drake gaped at me. “Everything is her thing, Simon.”

“See?” I said. “She might have even given me the idea in the first place. Now, tell me what you’ve learned so far.”

Drake didn’t know nearly as much as I would have liked. He hadn’t seen enough of the fortress to guess how many men were garrisoned there. He didn’t know the names of the people in charge, and he hadn’t met Mistress Zee yet, though he had seen her from a distance.

“What does she look like?” I asked.

Drake shrugged. “Nothing special. Just a girl.” His brow furrowed. “She’s really young. Probably not much older than us. And she wore clothes like you.” He pointed at my pants.

“Jeans?” I said. “Are you sure?”

He nodded emphatically. “I’d recognize your crazy pants anywhere.”

“Thanks.” I paced the room, thinking hard. Could Mistress Zee really be a wizard from Earth? If so, why wasn’t she at Skelligard? She certainly sounded young enough. Suddenly I felt the weight of my ignorance; there were too many things I didn’t understand.

“Drake,” I said. “What do you think is going on here?”

Drake relaxed. I guessed that he had been doing a lot of thinking in the last few hours and was full to bursting with theories.

“I think she’s one of the Fallen,” he said heavily.

“The what?”

Drake sighed and handed me a piece of paper.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a list of books you need to read when we get back. They’ll help with your ignorance problem.”

I felt my face flush, but I pocketed the list. He had a point. “Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll read whatever you want later, but for now you’ll have to explain things to me.”

He looked satisfied. “Do you remember how I told you that one of the knights of the Circle was murdered a couple years ago?”

“Yeah. Bartholomew, right?”

Drake nodded. “Do you remember who did it?”

“Some kind of dog?” I said, racking my brain.

“The Jackal,” Drake corrected. “He’s not a dog. He’s a person. Sort of. He’s the Shadeking. Basically he stands for everything wizards hate. Corruption, murder, using magic to get money or control people.”

I held up a finger. “He stands for what most wizards hate,” I guessed.

Drake grimaced. “Exactly. He has followers. Not a lot, but they’re pretty powerful.”

“Why doesn’t the Circle just off this guy?”

Drake laughed. “He’s powerful, Simon. Scary powerful. He’s done things with magic that we can’t even comprehend.”

I grinned. “Things like making a fish fly?”

Drake glared at me. “He killed Bartholomew, Simon. Do you think it’s easy to kill a knight of the Circle? It isn’t. People are scared of him. I’m scared of him. You have to take this seriously.”

“Fine.” I sighed. “I’m serious. So what does he have to do with us?”

Drake lowered his voice. “About fifty years ago, the Jackal started stealing kids. You know, young wizards, before they could make it to Skelligard. He steals them and”—he waved his hand in a gesture of futility—“well, we don’t know what he does with them. But he steals them, and they’re never heard from again. Most people think he’s training them. Making some sort of army.”

“Are you serious?” I said.

“Dead serious. That’s why Atticus guarded you all those years. That’s one of the things the Circle does. They oversee the protection of prospective wizards. If it wasn’t for Atticus, the Jackal’s bloodhounds would probably have gotten you years ago. They can sniff out magical children from a mile away. Usually the Circle finds them first. But not always.”

I shuddered at the memory of blood-red dogs frothing at the mouth, their bodies slamming against Atticus’s window.

“If Mistress Zee is one of the Fallen, then the Jackal could be behind all of this.”

I nodded gravely. “And do you think we should stop it?”

Drake blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s a new day. The turncoat could probably take us straight back to Skelligard right now. I could probably get you out of here safely. We could find Tessa, use the turncoat, go back to Skelligard, and get reinforcements, tell the Circle of Eigh— What?”

Drake was shaking his head. “Give me that paper back.” He added a book to the list. When he handed it back, I read the title aloud.

“Knights of the Circle, Their Powers and Deeds, by Moopity Muse. Is that really her name?”

Drake sighed. “If you had read that book, you’d know that the Circle of Eight go wherever they’re needed. If they were needed here, they’d be here.”

“Who brings them?”

Drake waved his hands in exasperation. “How should I know? Gladstone would probably say it’s fate. My dad would say it’s Scayla. It doesn’t matter. The point is, they’re not here. We are…” He scowled. “And there is another thing you should know: Daru is a dark planet.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it’s inside the fold.”

At the look on my face, Drake rubbed his eyes, half wearily, half thoughtfully, trying to figure out how to explain things.

“Look,” he said, “Daru is on the opposite end of the solar system from Skelligard, and it’s inside something we call the fold.” He scratched his head. “Basically, due to an intergalactic gravitational warping of the space-time continuum, a day on Daru equals about ten minutes on Skelligard.95

I stared at him.

“Don’t think about it too hard,” he advised.

“You mean we’ve only been gone for ten minutes? Hawk might still be in Stores, fighting the Horror?”

He shrugged. “Probably. But don’t get any ideas. We’re here for a reason, and you know it. If anything, this should make you feel better about staying a few extra days. It will only cost us a few minutes back home.

“So,” I said, grinning, “you think that three unprepared kids should take on an evil sorceress all by themselves, with nothing but a magic coat to help them?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t that your plan from the start?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But you’re supposed to be the cautious one, remember?”

“Sorry.”

I grinned. “Don’t be. You’re right. We are supposed to be here. And we will defeat this Zee chick…I have a plan.”

11. Infestation

It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

—Gandalf96

Drake didn’t like my plan much, but in the end he couldn’t think of a better one.

1. When the other minotaurs asked him what Scayla spoke to him about, he would say she had chosen him to face me in battle. If all went well, when the time came for me to face Mistress Zee’s champion, it would be Drake. Of course, we’d have to pretend to fight each other. And it would have to be convincing, since people would be watching. How would we do that? Our plan was to improvise when the time came. This is the part that Drake disapproved of most vehemently. I didn’t mind so much: In three days (now two days, technically) I would be lucky again. What could go wrong?

2. Between now and then, I would use my new super spy techniques to do some reconnaissance on Mistress Zee. Drake would locate her chambers and I would sneak in and see if I could learn something that might give us an edge.

3. Between now and then, I would also learn as much as I could about the turncoat. With any luck, I’d have amazing new powers to use in my face-offs with Drake and Mistress Zee.

When I finally left Drake an hour later, he was rehearsing a casual conversation to have with a minotaur the next day, and it sounded good.97 Getting back out wasn’t as difficult as you might think. As I (Scayla) had requested, the hallway was left undisturbed, and there wasn’t a minotaur in sight.

I thought about trying to spy on Mistress Zee right then and there, but in a rare moment of caution, decided against it. Mostly because I was tired. Also because I had no idea where she was, and even if I found her, she’d probably just be fast asleep, drooling on her pillow.98 So I went back to the rebellion’s secret hideout.

Or rather, I tried to.

The thing about secret hideouts is, they’re pretty hard to find in the dark. Of course, I’d already used Path once, so even if I found one of Tessa’s hairs, or a speck of dust, or a bit of pork sauce on my shirt, I couldn’t have used it to find my way. Unfortunately I only remembered this after shivering for ten minutes in the moonlight, without my shirt on, searching it for pork sauce or Tessa’s hair. Like I said, I was tired.

After that, I just looked for someplace warm to sleep. In the end, I curled up at the base of a tall white stone that formed a natural shelter from the wind. If it had been winter, I might have died. As it was, I shook so hard that night that it still makes my neck ache to remember. For the first time, I appreciated my coat simply for being a coat.

In the morning, I woke from a fitful sleep, feeling lost. It took me a minute to remember that I really was lost.

The first thing I noticed was that the stone I had slept against was not a stone at all. It looked like a huge weather-beaten bone. It was long and slightly rounded, and there were many others like it in the little valley where I’d slept. Some of them were cracked and broken with age, while others bore faint, delicate carvings, as if some traveler had whittled on them to pass the night. I walked among the white things for a while, quite forgetting the fact that I was supposed to be looking for the hideout.

Finally I climbed a tree to get a better look at them, and that’s when I realized what they were.

“Bones,” I whispered.

“Giant bones, actually.”

I was so shocked to hear the voice that I nearly fell out of the tree. “Who said that?”

“I did.” The voice was a deep baritone, with a thick English accent.

“Where are you?”

“Down here.”

I looked down, but there was no one near the foot of the tree. Then I saw it peeking out of my left boot: the tiny, pea-sized head of a miniature orange gecko.

“Chester?”

“Hardly,” the gecko said.

“Sorry,” I said, not wanting to offend it. “I know someone named Chester who looks a lot like you. I thought you were him for a second.” In reality, I was not happy to have a talking gecko hiding in my boot, but I was trying to be as polite as possible. It was very brightly colored, after all, and animals like that tend to be poisonous. Did I mention it was inside my boot?

The gecko sniffed. “That you would have met another of my kind is highly unlikely. I know nobody by that name. My name is Leto.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance, Leto. I’m Simon.” I hesitated. “I’m sorry if this seems rude, but…why are you in my boot?”

Leto gave me a curious look. “It is warm,” he said simply.

“Right,” I said, nodding. “Well, Leto, I have to tell you, I don’t actually know much about Daruvian shoe leeches.”

“That,” he said icily, “is a name to which I do not answer.” There was so much venom in his voice that I didn’t dare move.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Only an uneducated fool from Skelligard would ever call me such a thing. Is that what you are, Simon?”

“Yep,” I said, nodding. There it was again: my uneducation.99 Biting me right in the keister.

“Then I will educate you,” Leto said. “That is a term that was once given to my kind by a wizard scientist with barely enough intelligence to fashion mud out of dirt and water.”

“I see,” I said carefully. “And what exactly are you?”

He cocked his head. “A dragon.”

I almost laughed. I’m glad I didn’t. This would have been a much shorter book.

“I can see that you do not believe me. Very well.” Leto’s tiny wings began to buzz, and he whisked into the air, circling my head with hummingbird-like precision. He flew slowly into the center of the valley. He was so small that by the time he was fifteen feet away, I could barely see him at all.

Suddenly there was a sound like thunder. The ground shivered beneath my feet and my ears nearly burst from the oppressive sound. It was so loud I thought my insides might fall apart, and I was gripped with a sudden feeling of fragility, like any little thing might be the end of me. Then it was gone.

Leto flew back to me and landed on my boot again, nestling down beside my sock.

“I,” he said in a lecturing tone, “am one of seven remaining members of the last race of dragons yet living in the universe. We are small, but our power is great. We are miniature dragons. But dragons nonetheless.”

I blinked numbly, glancing out over the burning valley. “There was nothing miniature about that roar.”

“Quite,” he said, nodding with approval. “Perhaps you are not as dull witted as I had thought. Did you say you had met another of my race? Who was it?”

“Chester,” I repeated.

Leto frowned. “Where did you meet this Chester? Was it at Skelligard? Two of my kin live there, tutoring young and vibrant minds. One of them is a blue female named Sitar. The other is my twin brother, Kestra.”

“That must be who I met,” I said. “But he told me his name was Chester.”

Leto’s frown deepened. “If my brother has forsaken his old name…if he has called himself a Daruvian shoe leech…” He shook his head. “I must speak with him at once. You will take me to him.”

“Uh,” I said, “I can’t.”

“And why on earth not?”

“Well…” I began. “Wait, do you know about Earth?”

Leto rolled his eyes. “Your ignorance saves you, even as it condemns you. If I could not clearly see that you are a benighted100 earthling, I would have killed you minutes ago for being so disrespectful. Now, why can you not take me to Skelligard?”

“Well, I can, I guess. Just not now. See, Daru has been conquered by an evil wizard girl, and I’m a Fayter, and I’m here to help, so I have to, you know, get rid of her before I go.”

“Did you say you are a Fayter?” Leto asked slowly.

“That’s what they tell me.”

He was quiet for several seconds. Then a whole minute. Then two. If I hadn’t thought he could roast me like a mini marshmallow (assuming he could breathe fire), I would have become impatient. Instead, I waited.

Finally he gave a single brisk nod, as if coming to some sort of decision. “Very well,” he said. “I shall accompany you on your journey. When it is finished, you will take me to my brother.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just to be clear, you’re going to just…uh…hang out in my boot?”

“Of course,” he said. “What else would I do?”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that somehow the book is about to get very exciting. There aren’t many pages left, and usually that’s when things really heat up. I have a bit of an ego problem (if you can call it a problem) and this is the perfect time for that to get me into some deep trouble, which puts the whole world in danger and forces me to change and become a better human being. That’s how stories usually work. Any second, things are going to get more exciting, and then you’ll start enjoying the book more, because you’re an excitement junkie. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s just—

“DON’T SHOOT!” Tessa cried. “It’s Simon!”

The rebel soldier froze, but he didn’t lower his bow. I had been walking around the forest, hoping to chance upon the entrance of the rebel hideout. I found it, obviously, but the guard at the entrance had an itchy bowstring finger.101 Luckily Tessa had come to watch for me as soon as she realized I was gone.

“Where have you been?” she said.

“I had to check on Drake.”

I had expected her to be happy about this, but instead her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Have you been off doing some sort of vigilante hero nonsense in the middle of the night?”

I grinned. “You could say that.”

“I can’t believe you would do that right after these people started to trust us! Do you know how that looks? Do you know how stupid I felt this morning when they found you missing?” She turned to the bowman. “I’ve changed my mind. Go ahead and shoot him.”

“No, really,” I said hurriedly. “I was just checking on Drake. He’s fine, by the way. And we’ve got a plan.”

“What if you had led Mistress Zee’s people back here?” Tessa said. “Did you think about that? The Tike told us there are always patrols out looking for the rebel hideout. What if they had happened across your tracks or something?”

“They didn’t,” I said defensively. “Do you see any minotaurs?”

As soon as I had said it, I heard a soft thump. An arrow had appeared in the bowman’s chest. For a split second, Tessa and I stared at it in shock. Then he slumped to the ground and she screamed.

A storm of arrows fell around us as I pulled Tessa into the mouth of the tunnel. A rebel soldier ran past us, sword drawn, only to fall to a hail of arrows. Two more men ducked around us, hurrying to guard the entrance.

Then the minotaur came. He bolted from the trees, ax raised, and crashed into the tunnel. He deflected a sword with his ax and caught the first soldier with his horns, tossing him a good ten feet. Then he spun and kicked the second soldier viciously.

If we hadn’t stopped running, we might have been to safety by this point. As it was, we were now standing face to face with an angry minotaur who had just dispatched two trained soldiers in less time than it takes me to pick my nose.

Tessa picked up a rock and hurled it at the minotaur with surprising force. He ducked his head, and the rock shattered against his horns. Her second rock hit him on the knee, and he actually tripped.102

“Simon,” Tessa hissed, “do something!”

We could hear soldiers running down the tunnel behind us, but they wouldn’t get to us in time. The minotaur was mad now. He growled and lurched at us. I acted on instinct, reaching into the jacket and turning a knob at random.

See? Now there is some suspense, and you’re already enjoying this book more, you excitement junkie, you.

The knob clicked into place and there was a sound like wind howling through a tin shack. The minotaur swung his sword at my head and then vanished in a swirling twist of fur.

“What did you do?” Tessa asked. Her hands were still upraised, ready to defend herself.

“I’m not exactly sure,” I said, even though I had a pretty good idea. My coat, you see, was suddenly heavier, as if someone had dropped a large rock in my pocket. I opened it to check which knob I had turned. E8.

Shadows danced across the sunlit tunnel entrance and shouts rang off the walls. Soldiers pulled us back down the tunnel.

“Bring it down!” one of them shouted. There was an explosion, and the ground trembled. A second later, we were hit by a gust of black dust, and everything went quiet.

The queen was a little riled. In her defense, I had been a pretty lousy houseguest. Sneaking off in the night, leading Mistress Zee’s army right into her hideout. And if Queen Kai was mad, that was nothing compared to the Tike. Back by the oak throne, with a band of angry rebels looking on, she said a bunch of nasty things. Including this:

“They will find the other entrances, Fayter. They will be on us in less than one hour. Our people will die if Queen Kai does not intercede, so she will have to challenge Mistress Zee today, and you will have to fight before you are ready. And for what? What did your nighttime escapade gain us?”

“Three things,” I responded calmly. “A plan, a dragon,103 and a minotaur.” As I said the last part, I snuck my hand into my coat and turned E8 again. At the same time, I raised my other hand in a dramatic arc and snapped my fingers loudly. As I had hoped, the minotaur from the tunnel swirled back into existence in front of me.104

The queen shouted, and several rebels were on the beast at once. He was too dazed to put up much of a fight, and in a matter of seconds he was bound hand and foot.

The Tike slipped a long, curved knife from her waist and laid it against his throat.

“How many troops come against us?” the queen asked flatly.

The minotaur gave a gurgling chuckle. “Five hundred,” he said.

The queen reeled.

“How many are minotaurs?” the Tike asked, pressing the blade more firmly.

“Half,” he coughed.

“Half,” she whispered, lowering the knife in defeat. “Too many by far.” She turned to the queen. “You really will have to challenge her today, my queen. We cannot fight so many, and we will not be able to outrun them in the woods.”

The queen nodded slowly. “So be it.” She pointed at one of the soldiers. “Run up the flag of surrender and bring their leader to me. I will issue the challenge here.” She settled back into her throne, motioned for the minotaur to be taken away, and then returned her attention to me.

“Fayter, you said you had a plan?”

“I have a spy among the minotaurs,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. “That is…impressive.”

I nodded. “I am confident that he will be chosen as Zee’s champion. He will let me defeat him, and then I will fight Mistress Zee. By the time I face her, I will know her weakness and how to defeat her.”

The queen nodded, satisfied.

The Tike snorted. “How could you have found her weakness so soon, when I have not detected one in weeks?” she asked. “Her magic is beyond all that I have encountered before.”

I shrugged, doing my best to convey an air of absolute confidence. “It won’t be a problem.”

“What about your spy? The challenge is to the death. Will he let you kill him?” My skin prickled at the mere curiosity in her voice, as if the idea of killing my friend was okay, as long as he was fine with it.

“Uh,” I said, “I will not really be killing him.”

“A deception?” Kai asked.

The Tike was outraged. “You would wager the lives of our people on a trick?”

I held up a placating hand. “It will be convincing, I assure you. But first I will need a few favors.”

“Name them,” the queen said.

I thought for a moment. “If you issue the challenge today, will I fight today or tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “It is tradition.”

“Good. Do you have a pig?”

The queen frowned. “What?”

“We had pork last night for dinner. Do you have another pig? Preferably a big one?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I have a pig.”

“Good. Have it killed. An hour before midnight, bring the skin to me. Don’t clean it. The messier, the better.”105

“What dark magic is this?” the queen said. “I will not have anything unnatural under my roof.

“No magic,” I said. “Just a trick. By the way, I also need a jar of something sticky. Glue, or molasses, or tar. And…uh…”

“Yes?”

“I need you to shave that minotaur.”

The Tike burst out laughing. “I will do that for you myself. Do you want me to bring you the minotaur at midnight also? All naked and angry? It would be my pleasure.”

I grinned. “No, thanks. Just his fur.”

The Tike’s eyes widened. “I see.”106

Just then, a runner came in to announce that the minotaur chieftain was on his way.

“Come,” Kai said, motioning for me to stand next to her. “You are my champion. You must stand beside the queen.”

To my surprise, she stood up from the throne and allowed the Tike to take it. Apparently their little game of trading spaces wasn’t just for me.

The minotaur chieftain, a black bull named Kajukal, was a larger specimen than any that I had previously seen.107 He was at least ten feet tall, with fur black as the night and hooves the size of hubcaps. His voice was so deep he made the Hulk sound like a fairy princess.

When he had introduced himself, Queen Tike stood and drew her long, narrow sword, pointing it directly at his chest. “I invoke the ancient right of challenge by mortal combat,” she said evenly.

The minotaur snorted. “You challenge me?”

The Tike laughed. Then she laughed some more. It was so condescending, I was jealous. I had to learn to laugh like that. As she laughed, the minotaur went from confused to offended to furious. By the time she was done, thick steam was curling from his nostrils.108

“You are nothing,” she said. “I challenge Mistress Zee.”

“You will meet her champion first,” the minotaur said. “At dawn tomorrow, on the field before the castle gate. Defeat him and you may fight the Mistress.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder proudly. “My champion will fight for me.”

The minotaur threw back his head and laughed. “I shall laugh at this fight,” he said. “Your champion, against the Prince of Golgoth? The chosen warrior of Scayla herself?” He laughed again.

“I’ve heard Mistress Zee’s chosen warrior is a hairless wimp,” I said loudly. “A child.” There were hoots and jeers from the rebel soldiers.

The minotaur glowered at me. His voice grew taut. “We will see who the hairless wimp is when you face the dreaded Drakus, he who has been honored by Scayla herself. We will see, and I will sing songs of your death to my children’s children, and you, you shall be dead. Very dead.”

He turned on his heel and strutted out of the cave with his guards in tow, proud as a peacock. As he went, I found Tessa’s face in the crowd and we shared a silent, knowing smile.

That night, I was too tired to train with the Tike. I retired to my room early and played Mario Kart to relax. Then I slept in my boots until a knock on my door woke me around eleven. I lit the small lamp by my little wooden bed and opened the door to reveal a portly man in a white blood-covered apron.

“Your pig skin,” he said, holding up a stained canvas sack.

The moment I took it, the guy shuffled away so fast that I checked my breath109 for stenchiness.110

I shut the door and set the gruesome sack on my little table which, apart from my bed, was the only piece of furniture in the room. I stretched, examining the bag thoughtfully, then sat down on my bed and took off my boots, rubbing my feet.

“And just what are you planning to do with that?” Leto asked, lounging across the top of my boot.

I jumped. I’d completely forgotten about him.

“See?” he said, noticing my startlement. “You don’t even know I’m here. And you were so worried about having a dragon in your boot.”

I had no idea what to say to this but was saved the trouble when someone else knocked on the door.

It was Tessa. She carried a small glass jar of sticky brown goop, and behind her the Tike was holding another canvas sack, no doubt full of minotaur fur.

“Excellent!” I said. “Come in.”

“Are we making a Drake carcass?” Tessa asked pleasantly.

“Indeed we are,” I replied.

“Too bad. He’ll be so mad he missed it. Shall I just put this on the table?” She set down the jar and picked up the turncoat map that she had made me. Meanwhile, the Tike had closed the door behind her and was standing like a statue.

“I assume your little minotaur-poofing stunt today was the result of a new knob,” Tessa probed. “Which was it?”

“E8,” I admitted.

“An E row,” she said. “I thought so. One of the ones with the pockets? I think we’ll call it Stash.” She glanced at the Tike. “Sit down, Tike. You’re making him nervous.”

The Tike sat down beside Tessa stiffly, placing the fur sack on her lap. Tessa rolled her eyes. “Go on, then,” Tessa said to me. “Do your thing.”

“Right.” I dumped out the contents of the first bag onto the table and rolled out the pigskin so that it was flat, trying not to gag at the smell. It was extremely disgusting, so I’m not going to describe it. “Dang,” I said.

“What?”

“I forgot to ask for a towel. Never mind. Give me the bedsheet.”

I mopped up the skin and then opened the jar of—

“Holy stork pimples!” I gasped. “What is this stuff?”

“Bat vomit,” the Tike said. “Boiled in pickle juice and honey, with a touch of cloves.”

“See,” I said, scooping out a handful, “it’s the cloves that make it smell so nice. I suppose you put it on toast?”

The Tike laughed. “We put it on our horses’ butts when they have an infection.”

“Lovely.” I spread it on thickly, choking down a dry heave. Soon I had a messy layer. I considered it, then grimaced and scooped out some more. When I was happy with it, I dumped the bag of fur out over the top of it and shook the loose pieces off. By the time I was done, it looked like something had died. Which, of course, it had. I held it at arm’s length and checked my watch. 11:41.

“Dang,” I said. I’d have to wait nineteen more minutes before turning E8 again.

Or did I? I guess I really didn’t know for sure that all of the knobs ran on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Just for the heck of it, I turned E8 right then.

The pig skin vanished. The skin weighed much less than the minotaur had, but I could still feel a small weight added to my coat.

I turned it again, and again, and the skin reappeared and vanished accordingly.

“Awesome!” I exclaimed. “This one just works all the time!”

The Tike grimaced. “Lovely.”

“Yeah,” Tessa said, “and that pig skin should smell fantastic by the time you make the switch. I assume that you’re going to make a switch?”

I nodded.

“Well,” Tessa said. “I hope it works.”

“AYYYYYIIA!” The Tike leapt to her feet. She was staring at my boots in a sort of horrified wonder. “Aeyalo couamae dakoloto taygah!”111

She backed away from the bed and pressed the flats of her hands together, bowing low.

“Suewemay, colo tae euiwho nadar. Hail, ancient father! Pray, give me your blessing and not a curse.”

“Hail, ancient daughter,” Leto said casually.

“Hey,” I said, “you two know each other?”

Leto rolled his little lizard eyes and the Tike ignored me completely, still stuck in a bow.

“Cueme naelahein sidar?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yes, daughter. And be at ease.”

The Tike slipped out of her bow and smacked me smoothly on the back of the head.

“Ouch! What was that for?”

“You did not tell me that you had been chosen by the Atar!”

Tessa punched me in the arm. “You didn’t tell me, either!” Then she bent down and scratched the top of his head. “I don’t know what an Atar is, but this little guy’s cute. Kind of reminds me of Chester.”

The Tike looked horrified. “Do not belittle the Atar,” she said sharply. “Simon has received a holy infestation. I have searched my whole life for the ancient fathers, just to sit at their feet and learn from their wisdom. But to actually be infested? There is no greater honor.”

She turned to me, and to my utter astonishment, gave me a small bow. “I have misjudged you, Simon Fayter. Please forgive me.” She took my hand, and I was horrified112 to see tears in her eyes. “I owe you a great debt for bringing me into the presence of one of the ancient ones.”

“Woah,” I said, “everyone just calm down. When you say ‘ancient ones,’ do you mean Leto here? Because he snuck into my boot this morning, so if he’s going to be some kind of problem—”

Leto cut me off with a massive sigh, which is disconcerting from such a small body.

“Before you make a complete fool of yourself,” he said, “understand that Cora here is of the old blood. Her people are blessed with long lives and longer memories, and they still recall the time in the beginning when my kin taught her ancestors the sacred ways. She is, in fact, the very last of her kind.” He gave her a slow, searching look. “You, Cora, will be the last of your people to take the Ardentia in this life.” As he spoke, he alighted from my boot and flew up to her, stopping directly in front of her face. “Will you take it now, daughter?”

She went white as a sheet, but nodded. Then he reached out a tiny orange hand and touched her left cheekbone.113 Slowly, a light appeared beneath his hand, and when he removed it, I recognized the white oval that I had seen on the faces of the other Antediluvians.

Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Who?” she asked.

He gave her a solemn smile. “You know,” he said, and then he returned to my boot and snuggled back inside.

I looked from the Tike to Leto to Tessa, and I knew that I was missing something important, and that I didn’t have time to sit around and talk about it for an hour. So I reached into my coat and turned B2 (Silvertongue).

“Listen,” I said, “the night’s getting on. I’ve got to sneak into Mistress Zee’s quarters tonight and do some reconnaissance, because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” I hesitated just the right amount, then placed my hand lightly on the Tike’s arm. “I know this is important to you. Will you walk with me as far as the fortress and help me understand what you’ve been talking about?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, my codex warmed. Excellent. I had been my ‘best self,’ probably, or I had helped her. Or both.114

She stared at me for a long moment, then nodded.

Tessa gave a wry laugh. “We’ll walk with you a bit farther than that, Simon.”

I sighed. “What’s the likelihood of you letting me go into the fortress alone?”

Tessa planted her feet firmly and placed her hands on her hips. “Simon Fayter, if you were the most powerful wizard in the universe, and I knew for sure that you’d be safe, and you offered me a mountain of gold to stay, I still wouldn’t let you go in there alone again.”

“So you’re saying there’s a chance?”

“I am coming in, too,” the Tike said.

“Perfect,” I said, slipping my boots back on. “Super-secret mission…highly dangerous…stealth critical…the more the merrier!”

12. Deception

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

—Theodore Roosevelt115

The walk to the fortress took significantly more time with the Tike. She insisted on using the most circuitous routes possible and frequently doubled back to make sure we were not being followed.116

As we walked, she told me how she had spent hundreds of years117 searching for the Atar (dragons) and how she had given up hope because there were so few of them left. The Ardentia was a sacred rite among the Antediluvians, and it could only be performed by one of the Atar. She flatly refused to tell me more about this, though it obviously had something to do with the new mark on her cheek.

For his part, Leto stayed silent. Indeed, you wouldn’t have even known he was there. I would later come to realize that dragons care little for the affairs of mortals and only poke their noses in if something interests them very greatly. When they infest a human (like Leto did to me), they do it for reasons that are only understood by themselves, if they are understood at all.118

When we reached the edge of the forest and the fortress came into view, I located a tree upon which I had carved a deep X. It was the secret drop spot that Drake and I had chosen,119 and sure enough, there was a note hidden among the roots, sealed in a little glass vial.

The note read, “Big room at base of highest tower. Third window from left.” Good old Drake!

Instead of coming up from below like the two previous times, the Tike led us on a long, terrifying hike into the mountains so that we could descend on the fortress from behind. It took two hours but made it so that I did not have to waste Leap.

Once the wall was within sight below us, we came to a halt and I voiced a thought that had been percolating for a while.

“I think Tessa should stay behind as lookout.”

“Excuse me?” she said crossly.

“Shh,” the Tike whispered. “We are close now. We must speak quietly. And I agree with Simon.”

I glanced at the Tike, surprised twice over. First because she agreed with me, and second because she had used my real name again instead of simply calling me “Fayter.”

“We need a lookout,” I said carefully. “To warn us if we’re in danger.”

The other reason was because the Tike and I would be much sneakier without Tessa. I had my boots and the Tike had ninja stealth.

Tessa sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine, but if you’re in danger, I’m not just going to toot a horn or something. I’m coming down to help.”

I turned to the Tike next, and she held up a hand. “Whatever you are going to say, don’t. I am coming with you.”

“I was just thinking,” I said, “it would be even safer if there was only one of us sneaking in. I don’t want you to stay behind,” I amended. “I just want you to, uh, come in my pocket.”

“In the pigskin pocket?” the Tike said with disgust.

“Oh,” I said. “Right.” I turned E8 and the pigskin splattered onto the rocks. Tessa gagged.

“I’m not going any place that thing has been,” the Tike said.

I put a hand on her arm. “Come on…it’s better this way, and it will give me the element of surprise if I’m attacked. I can turn the knob and you come flying out of nowhere, ready to fight.”

She considered me for a while, then relented. “Very well.” She jabbed a finger in my chest. “But you will tell no one of this. If you do, I will tell everyone I meet about how you pick your nose when you think no one is watching.”

I blushed. How had she seen that?

I turned E8 again and she vanished, adding a pleasant weight to my coat.

“Good luck,” Tessa said, and then I was gone.

After I had avoided my fourth guard in a row due to my amazing new stealth skills, I had a new appreciation for Rellik’s boots. Even the Tike, I suspected, could not be as silent as I was that night. I made it to the window in question without much difficulty, at which time I regretted my decision to leave Tessa behind.

The window was stuck.

It wasn’t locked, just stuck hard, but I wasn’t strong enough to open it. It’s these situations where a buff guy like me really needs a pretty girl to help him out, especially if the girl happens to be a Strong. But Tessa wasn’t there, so I just broke the window. In my defense, I waited a long while to make sure no one was in the room, and I wrapped my fist in my shirt to deaden the noise, and I laid out my coat on the stone ledge beneath the window to muffle the sound of falling glass. Still, it made a bunch of noise. Bye-bye, stealth mode…

By the time I had climbed through the window and replaced my shirt and coat, my heart was racing. I was sure I’d be caught, so I just stood there in the big, dark room for a while, waiting. After a few minutes, when nothing happened, I lit a small lamp on the bedside table.

Mistress Zee’s chambers were large and decadent and covered completely in purple velvet. The color alone was nearly enough to make me dive back out the window, but I held my ground.

I searched the room. There were no pictures on the dresser. No obvious mementos of home, but then again, maybe evil witches just aren’t that sentimental. I opened the wardrobe and thumbed through a collection of robes in different shades of purple and red. Then I moved to the dresser. It was massive, with seven long drawers. I started with the bottom, since that’s where I always hide things. It was full of socks. Next drawer up, pants. Above that, belts and scarves. Next drawer, underwear (slammed it shut in panic). Above that, sweaters. At the top, a purple Disney princess backpack and a diary.120

Jackpot.

I opened the cover and saw her name, McKenzie Carpenter, written in bold red ink. McKenzie. Mistress Zee!121

I slipped the diary under my arm and moved on to the backpack. I had expected it to be full of books. Textbooks, maybe, or extremely overdue library books. But it wasn’t. It was full to bursting with games.

And not just any games.

Nintendo DS games.

Loads of them. There was Super Mario Bros, Lego Batman, Lego Superheroes, Pokémon Black, Pokémon Black 2, Legend of Zelda, and…wait for it…three copies of Mario Kart. Three. One was still in its original packaging (a collector’s item!), one had seen a bit of wear, and the last looked like she had played it every day for ten years straight and then dragged it behind her bike while she rode down a gravel driveway.

This chick was a gamer. A serious gamer. One of my people…

Just then, a little click sounded behind me and I spun, accidentally flinging the backpack across the room and spraying the floor with games.

A girl stood in the doorway.122 She was a few years older than me and wore a purple dressing gown. It only took her a second to figure out what was going on, at which point her surprise was replaced by rage.

Too late, I made for the window; she tossed a piece of paper up and I rose into the air, suspended a few feet off the ground, my legs pumping futilely.

She crossed the room to me and tore the diary out from under my arm. “Who are you?” she demanded.

There was an explosion just outside her door, and we both jumped. Rather, she jumped. I flailed in the air like a struck piñata. A second later, a minotaur burst through her door, breathing hard.

“What is it?” she said.

“Wizard,” he grunted. “Wizard on the mountain.”

Tessa.

She glanced back at me, and I felt myself dropping back to the floor. “I will investigate. You stay and guard the boy. I caught him sneaking around in my chambers. Do not speak to him. If he moves while I am gone, kill him.”

The minotaur grunted and Zie tucked the diary into her belt and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

Amazed at my good fortune, I grinned at the minotaur and then turned E8.

The Tike materialized in the space between us and leapt into action. The minotaur swung high and she went low, wrapping her legs around his and then twisting her body, pulling him to the ground. He knocked his head on the doorknob on the way down and did not get up.

“Thanks!” I said. I turned E8 again, and she was sucked back into my pocket.

In the split second before she disappeared, I saw her face contort in rage. Oh well. One thing at a time. Right now, I needed to get out of here fast, and she would only have gotten in my way.

I ran to the window, turned B1 (Leap), and jumped out into the night.

As soon as we were safely into the forest, I released the Tike. After insulting my mother, my grandmother, and most of my other ancestors, she stalked off in search of Tessa. For her part, Tessa was in a bit of a jam. She had seen Mistress Zie coming and, using her remarkable strength, toppled a large boulder from the mountainside, which rolled down and smashed right through the wall outside Zie’s chambers. She had barely been able to outrun the soldiers who pursued her, and in her flight she had twisted her ankle badly. This was because she was carrying the pigskin as she ran. I had forgotten about that…

When the Tike finally returned with her, it was nearly dawn. Less than an hour before I would be fighting Drake. I returned the pigskin to Stash, and we tried to make Tessa as comfortable as possible in the forest, since there wasn’t time to return to the hideout. From where we were, we could see the field in front of Zie’s fortress, where the fight was to take place later that morning.

As the time for the challenge approached, rebels began to turn up at the edge of the forest. They were cautious at first, but soon grew bolder, leaning against trees, laying out blankets on the grass at the forest’s edge. There was supposed to be a truce during challenges, but the last few months of fighting had taught them to be careful.

While we waited, the Tike offered to loan me one of her knives, just for show, but I decided it would look more impressive if I walked out unarmed.

Eventually, the queen herself arrived to watch. She was pretending to be a handmaiden again, of course, but when she got there, one of the soldiers marched into the field and raised a red flag, holding it so that those on the fortress wall could see; it was the signal to begin.

Slowly, the gate creaked open.

A squadron of twenty minotaurs marched out, dressed in shining armor that flashed in the morning light. For a moment, I panicked. Where was Drake? Had our plan failed? I had been so certain my little Scayla stunt would ensure that—

Then I saw him. He was in the group, just hidden from view by his diminutive size. The very center of the group. The place of honor.

When the minotaurs got halfway across the field between us, they stopped and spread out, allowing Drake to step forward. He wore no armor (I doubt they could have found any minotaur armor small enough to fit him), but he carried a short staff of dark wood. It was odd to see him with a weapon, but if I had been forced to pick a weapon for him, that probably would have been it. It might have been a walking stick, if he had been holding it a little more casually. I wondered if he knew how to use it. Probably. He did say he lived in a warlike culture. Maybe baby minotaurs learn to fight like we learn the ABCs…

Sensing my cue, I strode across the field proudly, stopping a few paces from my friend.

Above us, on the nearest battlement, I saw a flash of purple. Mistress Zie was there, watching.

Good.

I raised my voice so that everyone would hear me. “I come in the name of Queen Kai, rightful ruler of Daru. Are you prepared to die?”

“Golsggjohsh Kabbjalk Ikto!” Drake cried (the watching minotaurs shouted and beat their chests enthusiastically), and he leaped into action.

I toyed with him for a few seconds, clearly in control and unafraid. I was so unconcerned that at one point I paused to tie my shoe. Then, when I had summoned my incredible power, I called lightning out of the sky and fried him to a bloody crisp.

At least, that’s what it looked like to everyone else. Here’s what really happened:

“Golsggjohsh Kabbjalk Ikto!” Drake cried (the watching minotaurs shouted and beat their chests enthusiastically), and he leaped into action. He spun his staff at my head. I was so surprised that I dodged too slowly and he managed to clip my shoulder.

“Ouch! What are you doing?”

“You said to make it look realistic! What’s your plan?” He swung twice more, then spun deftly and caught me in the stomach with a backward thrust.

I doubled over, breathless, and pretended to tie my shoe. Right then I decided that the fight shouldn’t last long. Drake was too good with his staff, and pretty soon it would look ridiculous if he didn’t finish me off.

I hopped out of reach as Drake advanced again, then rose to my full height and turned D6 (Lightning). A bolt of blue energy leapt from the sky and fanned outward, falling over Drake. I did my best to keep the worst of it off him, regretting that it was an unlucky day. At this point, I knew the onlookers would be shielding their eyes, blinking, or squinting due to the unexpected brightness, so I turned E8 and in a swirl of color, Drake was replaced by a mangled heap of bloody flesh, complete with minotaur fur.

There were gasps and screams from both sides of the field. Ignoring them, I raised my arm dramatically and pointed at Zie.

“Tomorrow at midday,” she called down. “Same place.”

“You picked the place,” I said. “And we both know you’re more powerful than me,123 so I get to pick the weapons.”

“As you wish,” she said easily. “It will make no difference.”

I nodded and strode away, practically beaming with good cheer. She didn’t know it, but she had just sealed her fate.

13. Megadudette124

Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not sure about the former.

—Albert Einstein

The rest of this day was spent feasting, nursing Tessa’s foot back to health, bandaging Drake’s electrical burns (oops), and resting up. We needed it, since none of us had slept the previous night. The Tike wanted to do more practice fighting with me, but I told her it wasn’t necessary. If everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t have to fight at all.

The next day was lucky, and it changed my life forever. Not just because of what I lost or what I accomplished, but also because of what was given to me.

At dawn, the Tike woke me from a peaceful sleep. I tried to say good morning, but she put a finger over her lips and bade me follow her. She waited for me to dress, then led me into the throne room, never saying a word. It was early enough that the room was deserted. For a moment, I thought she was leading me to the throne itself, but she kept walking, leading me behind the dais and up to the massive white stones set into the back wall.

She stopped in front of them and waited expectantly.

“Remove your boots,” she said. “This is a sacred place.”

She took off her soft leather shoes and I did the same. I glanced up at the white stone uncertainly and marveled at the intricate carving. I could see why she thought of it as sacred. It depicted nature scenes in the four seasons of the world, complete with leaves and seeds and falling snow. It must have taken a team of craftsmen months to make something like that.

“Is it stone?” I asked, suddenly curious. It was reminding me again of the ivory table in the courtyard of Skelligard.

“It is bone,” she said softly. “An ancient tradition of my people. Once, at the beginning of the world, giants roamed the land and killed my people. The Atar taught us how to fight them, how to be strong. My ancestor slew the first giant by breaking his shin bones, and now the bones of giants litter the land. In the spirit of remembrance, our sacred doors have been fashioned out of the shin bones ever since. Whenever you pass beneath doors of bone, you may know that you are come to deal in matters of life and death.”

“Doors?” I said, startled.

She nodded, then reached behind a delicately carved floral border and pulled the white door open.

The chamber within was smaller than I expected, but there was no roof, or if there was one, it was so far above us that I could not see it. A torch burned on each wall, and in the middle of the floor there were two cushions. She sat cross-legged on one and invited me to take the other.

“We must talk now of the Ardentia,” she said gravely.

I nodded, not sure what was expected of me. Actually, I was wondering why she was talking to me about this at all.

“It is a binding,” she said, raising her hands, “of one person to another.”

“Like friendship?” I asked.

She cocked her head. “The Ardentia is deeper than friendship.”

I fidgeted. My level of discomfort with this conversation was growing by the second. “Like marriage, then?” I asked.

“No. The Ardentia is not about romance. A man may be bound to another man in the Ardentia, or to a woman. Or a woman to a woman.”

I gave a sigh of relief. Personally, I didn’t think that the Tike and I were that good of friends yet, but as long as she wasn’t going to ask me for marriage advice, I could listen.

“The Ardentia is the deepest bond of my people,” she went on. “It goes beyond families, beyond blood. It is the binding of one soul to another with complete devotion and unconditional loyalty.”

I nodded slowly, indicating the white oval on her cheek. “Does this have something to do with your mark?”

She touched it, turning her face away. “When the Ardentia has been made, the Atar marks the face of the Antediluvian to seal the bond.”

I nodded, thinking of all the Antediluvians I had seen. I frowned. “Who is Queen Kai bound to?” I asked. “Is there a king?”

She smiled fondly. “No. The queen is bound to her people. Her bond is with every man, woman, and child for whom she has stewardship.”

“Woah.”

“Yes. The Ardentia is usually between only two people, but the queen is different.”

I cleared my throat, unable to avoid the obvious question any longer. “So, uh, who’s the lucky guy?” I hesitated. “Or girl?”

The smile fell from her face, and when she looked at me I saw all the long years of her life reflected in her eyes. “You are,” she said.

I blinked. “What?”

“You,” she repeated more forcefully. “I am bound to you.”

Now, I was an extremely mature thirteen-year-old. I mean, way beyond my years. On the inside, I was basically sixteen. But the prospect of an unromantic non-marriage to a cute millennium-aged ninja freaked me right out. I jumped to my feet, laughing wildly. It was the kind of crazed noise that escapes you when you realize something horrible and strange is about to happen and your brain tries to laugh and cry and scream all at once.

The Tike rose to her feet as well, looking concerned. “Does this not please you?” she asked.

“PLEASE ME?” I yelled. “I don’t even know what it is!”

She cocked her head. “I have explained—”

“I barely even know you!” I continued. “I’m thirteen! What if I don’t want to be a part of your Ardentia…thingy?”

She nodded. “I was also angry at first. You are young, and foolish, and an outsider. And you will take me away from the home of my ancestors. But the Atar has chosen, and we must trust in his wisdom.”

“Forget his wisdom!” I said, striding to the door. I retrieved my right boot from the other side and walked back to the Tike. Then I shook the boot vigorously, and Leto slipped out and bounced off the floor.

“Ayia!” the Tike exclaimed.

“What on earth were you thinking?” I demanded of the dragon. “I can’t believe that you would—”

The rest of what I was going to say was cut off when a plume of hot air engulfed my face.

Now, you don’t know this yet, but the Atar have amazing control over their fire, and this was not fire. Barely (as you’ll find out later, it’s a very big deal when the Atar really breathe fire). It was hot enough to set my hair alight and remove my eyebrows and melt my earwax and give my lips a second-degree burn. More than anything, it scared the living lint-balls right out of me.

“YOU LISTEN TO ME NOW, SIMON FAYTER,” he roared. “WHAT I HAVE SPOKEN, I HAVE SPOKEN! I CANNOT CURE YOU OF YOUR RECKLESS PRIDE, BUT IF YOU CAN SUMMON THE PRESENCE OF MIND TO ACCEPT THE GIFTS THAT FATE IS GIVING YOU, YOU MAY YET CHANGE THE WORLD.”

He shook himself slightly, as if his sudden burst of energy had jarred something loose. “Now,” he said. “Apologize. And put your boots back on. They’re beginning to get cold.”

The rest of the morning was a blur. There was some sort of celebration at breakfast when the Tike announced our Ardentia, which I thought was weird considering the duel that was still looming over me. Then I had to explain it all to Tessa and Drake, which was a complete disaster.

Drake thought that I was getting married for a solid hour and only realized the truth when the Tike used some other term for the Ardentia, which Drake recognized from a book he read once. After that, he was on board. Meanwhile, Tessa was bumfuzzled.125 At first she seemed to get it, but soon afterward she fell into such a sour mood that I knew she had misunderstood something. I wished that there was more time to discuss it. That the Tike would take the time to do it properly with her, but noon rolled around too quickly, and before long we were marching through the forest toward the most epic face-off of my young life.

The field had been transformed. Where before there was wide open space, several rings of stadium style wooden benches had been erected, each one higher than the last. There was a round mound of earth in the center of the circle where we would fight, and on either side, six wrought-iron chairs for the guests of honor. Six grizzled minotaurs filled the chairs on the queen’s side, while the benches were dotted with guards and servants from the fortress. On our side, the queen and her guards, including the Tike, filled the iron chairs, and our band of rebels filed onto the benches. Drake watched from the trees. (It seemed like a bad idea for him to suddenly return from the dead.)

When the sun had reached its zenith, the gates swung open and two minotaurs appeared, carrying a long wooden case. They set it down on one of the benches and opened it to reveal an impressive array of weapons: knives, daggers, maces, hammers, spears, pikes, swords, halberds, and other things I did not know the names for. When they had taken their seats, Mistress Zie walked through the fortress gate, completely alone. She was dressed in simple leather armor and wore a thin, delicate crown.

She walked onto the mound where I stood and said, “What will it be, then? Do you want a duel of magic? Or would you prefer hand-to-hand combat?” She flashed a wicked grin.

That smile said a lot: If I chose hand-to-hand combat, she was going to cheat and kill me with magic.

“Actually,” I said. “I would prefer electronic combat. More specifically, Nintendo DS.”

“What?” she snapped.

“Yes,” I said loudly. “I have the right to choose the weapons, and I choose Mario Kart, on a Nintendo DS. We will play one cup, and the best time wins.”

A rush of whispering spread through the crowd, and Zie glowered at me. “That is clever, boy, but it is not a fight to the death.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Winner gets to kill the loser. No questions asked. There, it’s a fight to the death. Now stop arguing with me like a scared little girl and fight!” I said this last part very loudly to ensure that all the minotaurs could hear me.

They responded well. Growls and grunts and inappropriate death threats. She could hardly back down in front of them.

For a moment, I thought she would kill me right then and there, but she composed herself and smiled instead. “Very well.” She sent for her backpack, and a few minutes later we each had a copy of Mario Kart loaded.

She ordered someone to bring her a chair from inside. I sat in the dirt.

When she was ready, I gave her instructions: “Mushroom Cup. All four runs. Play Luigi in the Poltergust 4000. When it’s over, we’ll compare times. Ready?”

She gave the slightest of nods.

My world went still. I cruised around the first corner and dodged a banana. So far so good.

“So,” she said after a few minutes, “have you been enjoying my diary? Oh, wait, that’s right. I caught you before you could steal it. Didn’t I, Simon?”

I glanced up at her and was nailed by a blue shell. How could she know my name? I knew she was just trying to distract me, but I was curious, so I took the bait.

“Yeah,” I said. “And then you made me pay. Oh, wait! That’s right, I totally got away. Honestly I was hoping you would be more powerful.”

“Likewise,” she said. “I was hoping you would be more fatal.”

I glanced up from my screen, unable to ignore the wordplay (I was doing well in the game so far. Figure 8 total time: 1:25:029). Knowing my name was one thing, but how could she possibly know that I was a Fayter?

“Have you and the Jackal been texting or something?” I asked. “Or do you have a source at Skelligard?”

She didn’t respond, so I focused on the game. I played flawlessly through Yoshi Falls. Total time: 0:49.159.

“Give up, and I promise you’ll die quickly,” she said.

“Lame,” I said, but I glanced up at her, and Luigi hit a crab on Cheep Cheep Beech. Freak! I returned my full attention to the game.

She tried to distract me two more times, but eventually she gave up, and we fought our separate battles in relative silence while a very confused crowd looked on.

Cheep Cheep Beach. Total Time: 1:31:519

Luigi’s Mansion. Total Time: 1:38:207

Not my best times, but decent. And decent for me was usually good enough to beat almost anyone. I set my DS down in my lap and waited.

“Final times?” she said tersely. I could tell she hadn’t done as well as she would have liked. No doubt she was out of practice. Too much world domination can make anyone lose their touch.

“You first,” I said.

“One thirty. One-oh-one. One twenty-eight. One forty.” She glared at me, daring me to claim a higher score.

I grinned and tossed her my DS. She glanced at the screen, then snapped it shut. “Well,” she said, “three out of four…It turns out you have more skill than I expected. So much for Plan A.”

“Plan A?” I repeated.

She clapped her hands, and behind me, the six iron chairs transformed into six hulking minotaurs.126 The arms of the chairs became black iron manacles that clamped around the arms of the six women. The Tike nearly got free, but the minotaur yanked the chain that held her manacle and she was thrown off balance. Then he head-butted her viciously, knocking her out with his horns. The other women were subdued more easily, and the minotaurs lifted them into the air and charged toward the center of the field. Simultaneously, row after row of archers appeared on the battlements above us, arrows trained on the rebel benches.

“If you move,” Zie said loudly, addressing the benches, “if you attempt to help your queen, you will die, and so will she.”

She snapped her fingers, and daggers were laid against the throats of Kai, the Tike, and the other four guards. Above us, bow strings were pulled taut.

“We will leave now,” Mistress Zie said, backing away from the field. “And you will let us. And tomorrow, I will decide what is to be done with you.”

We watched as they went, and I almost did something. If I had acted then, maybe things would have been different. Who can say? All I know is that I stood still and watched them walk back into the fortress and close the gate. Only then did I realize I had done exactly the wrong thing.

14. The Boy with Coal-Black Eyes

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…127

—Theodore Roosevelt

If you’re hoping that I have a total macho moment right now and storm the castle single-handed to rescue the damsels in distress, you’re in luck.

That’s exactly what I did.

Like I said earlier, the moment I saw the gate close, I knew, deep down, that I had made the wrong decision. Partially because I became suddenly sick to my stomach. This was no mere rash or head itch. This was serious. If I didn’t change my course of action right away, I was going to be sick128 all over the field, in front of everyone. I should have fought. I should have unleashed the power of the turncoat and…and…done something. But I hadn’t. I was scared, I suppose. Scared of getting them killed. Scared of getting myself killed. And now because of my fear, they would probably just die for certain.

Unless I saved them.

I glanced down at a speck of red on the ground and realized that it was the Tike’s blood. I scooped up a pebble, scraped as much of it up as I could, dropped it in the pocket of E7 (Path), and turned the knob, revealing a clear golden ribbon leading from my feet to the gate.

I didn’t retreat with the rebels and make a plan. I didn’t look for Drake or Tessa. I was done with being careful. Being careful had probably ruined everything already.

So I unleashed havoc.

I turned C1 (Chameleon) and disappeared. Instantly, my nausea ceased.

I ran to the wall and turned B1 (Leap) to jump clear over it. I stole a sword from a guard on the other side and pelted down my golden path at top speed. The last two times I had used Chameleon, it had only lasted about five minutes before wearing off, so I had to make this count.

I followed the path down a ramp toward the foundations of the castle and came to a stop in front of a pair of tall bone doors guarded by two soldiers. They were carved even more intricately than the ones in the caverns and were nearly twice as tall. Of course they would be behind there. What had the Tike said? “When you pass beneath doors of bone, it is to deal in matters of life and death.”

Remember, I wasn’t truly invisible, so when I appeared they raised their spears, no doubt wondering if the vague, shimmery shape they saw was some sort of apparition.

“Do you see that?” one said.

“Do you smell that?” the other replied.

“Something’s fishy…”129

I probably could have dodged around them, but I was afraid they might follow me through if they saw me going inside, so I stabbed them to death.

Gotcha!

Of course I didn’t kill them. Wow, that would be dark. I did think about it briefly, but then I just poked their feet with my dagger instead, which was horrible enough. But my codex flashed warmth, and I guessed that I had been my best self just then. Sweet.

After that, they didn’t even notice when the doors opened and I slipped inside.

The room inside was long and tall and dark and made entirely of stone. The sole source of light was a narrow floor-to-ceiling window of stained glass that cast a beam of light across the floor like a pale sword. Standing in the light in the center of the room was Zie. The six rebel women knelt in a circle around her, their manacled arms twisted roughly behind them and chained to iron rings in the floor. Each of them was also guarded by a minotaur.

Zie was holding a large pad of paper, not unlike the sketch pads that I had seen in art stores back on Earth. She was drawing feverishly, and I thought suddenly of Shea, drawing wizard cloaks with her magic art. Could Zie be a Muse? Is that how she had turned those minotaurs into chairs and back again?

Suddenly she finished her drawing and tore it from the pad. She threw it toward me like a Frisbee and then began to draw anew. The paper bent in midair, grew, and morphed into a monster the likes of which I had never seen before. It was the size of a hippo, with eight iron legs sharpened at the end like swords and a single glowing yellow eye.

I stayed perfectly still, maximizing my invisibility, until it was very close to me, then darted forward and stabbed it in the eye. The monster reeled and tipped, and when it hit the ground it scattered into a thousand paper shreds.

Zie tossed her next drawing into the air and a ten-foot-tall anorexic stick-monster130 landed with a crack. Its whole body was made of spears, and it began to pluck them from its legs, its trunk, and hurl them at me. I suppose it would have thrown its whole body around the room eventually, effectively destroying itself, but I hardly had time for that, so I reached for B4 (Ninja) and charged it. Except that I didn’t actually turn B4. I turned B2 (Silvertongue).131

The result was that instead of conquering the spear giant with amazing sword skills, my blade bounced off the shaft of the spear I struck and smacked me in the face (luckily with the flat of the blade). I opened my mouth to say something naughty, but Silvertongue was still active so I found myself shouting the perfect thing:

“Gibeah!”

The spear monster burst into a torrent of blue flame and burned up, quick as paper. Too bad I couldn’t make that spell work whenever I wanted…

Zie tossed her next drawing and it rolled into a giant snake. It was as wide as a school bus, with a mouth like a great white shark.

I turned A2 (Whisper) in a ridiculous attempt to talk to it. As if talking to an angry man-eating snake would convince it to leave me alone. It didn’t work at all—probably because the snake wasn’t a real flesh-and-blood animal, or because I don’t have a lightning-shaped scar on my forehead—so I rolled to one side and tried to run away, but it crossed over me with the length of its body and coiled around me, lifting me into the air.

I hunted for B4 again but turned A4 instead and found myself saying “Overnight lows in the mid to low forties. Ninety percent chance of rain in the afternoon” as the serpent wrapped a second coil around me and forced me to drop my sword.

Without further ado, it ate me. Or rather, it tried to. It opened its mouth and dropped me in, but with a marvelous stroke of luck, I managed to avoid being impaled by any teeth as I landed. Just before its jaws came crashing down, I spotted its uvula,132 turned A1, and slapped it with a salmon. It gagged and spit me out.

Of course, I landed right beside one of the minotaur guards. I finally managed to turn B4 (Ninja), and three seconds later he was laying on the ground with one of his horns broken and my dagger buried in his thigh.133

Behind me, the snake was rearing to strike. In front of me, Zie was ripping off her next drawing.

I jumped toward her, turned A3 (Curse), and smacked her sketchpad with the back of my hand. It tore in three places and fell to the floor. Behind me, the snake vanished.

And there we were, just me and Zie…and five minotaurs…and all my friends bound in chains.

Suddenly I regretted using up all of my useful turncoat powers. They had got me this far, but what was I supposed to do now? Short of turning knobs at random (which I had not ruled out), I was out of options.

While I stood there, one of the minotaurs put me in a headlock. Another one held my arm in a vice-like grip, and a third took out a shining silver knife and grabbed my hand.

“Now,” Zie said, lowering her head so that I could see her face from my headlock, “we are going to get some information from you. Tell the truth and keep your little finger. Lie, and from now on you’ll only count to nine. Do you understand?”134

“I understand that that dress went out of style about five years ago,” I said.135

Her eyes narrowed at me. “Which of these women is the queen? I daresay her loyal subjects will be willing to barter for her life. Tell me and spare this little world the war that is coming to it.”

“Your eyebrows are uneven, and you stink at Mario Kart,” I said.

She grabbed my hair and twisted, bending close to my face. “Which one is the queen?”

“Your breath smells like a llama’s armpit.”136

She nodded to the minotaur with the knife, and he laid the cold steel against my pinky.

She bent in close and whispered in my ear, “Which one is she?”

For a brief moment, I considered pointing at Kai and saying, “That one!” But of course, I didn’t. Still, I’m not proud of even thinking it.

In the end, I looked her straight in the face and said, “Pull my finger.”

There was a flash of silver and I lost a digit.137

Sometime during the very manly screaming that followed my little amputation, the Tike managed to get free. Later, I learned that she always kept a tiny steel wire hidden in the cuff of her shirt sleeve. It had taken her a while, but she had picked the lock on her manacles.

She moved like lightning, hitting Zie from behind so hard that she crumpled. The minotaur with the knife was next, followed by the other two who had been holding me. I’d seen her fight before, but never when she was truly angry, and it was incredible. I’m ashamed to say that I just stood there, watching her face the minotaurs alone, one after the other. The last two came at her together, and she was forced to retreat a few feet.

That’s when Zie came to and reached for my throat. She had both hands around it so quickly that I couldn’t call out for aid. Then she was on top of me, choking me hard.138

I pulled at her fingers to no avail. Her grip was like iron. I kicked her, poked her in the eye, tried to throw her off me, but nothing worked.

Finally, I thrust my hand into the turncoat and began turning knobs at random.

Several strange things happened in the course of a few seconds: My ears tingled, and from a great distance, I heard someone say, “You’ll have to meet him, Fidget. I want to know if he is everything that you imagined.” Then my stomach was instantly quite full, as if I’d eaten a large meal. Then I heard Zie saying “Die. Die. Die!” though her lips had not moved. Then a sheep fell out of midair beside us.139

I turned B5 (Hair) and wrapped my beard around her neck. I pulled it tight, and her grip slackened. I kneed her in the stomach and rolled on top of her, then I turned C2 (Stink) and breathed in her face. She turned a pale green color and went limp. I released her, stepped back, turned E8 (Stash), and Zie vanished.

Immediately my coat began to twitch and squirm, as if I had a mouse in my pocket that was trying to get out. For a moment, I was afraid she would get out, but she didn’t.

I had captured her for good.

When the Tike had finished dispatching the minotaurs, she helped me bandage my pinky stump, and I helped her pick the locks140 on the remaining manacles and free the queen and guards.

If you think that we were out of trouble at this point, you must’ve forgotten about the five hundred minotaurs that stood between us and freedom.

We snuck141 back out of the inner castle, through the fortress streets, and were halfway to the gate before Zie’s guards spotted us. They were on us like a pack of wolves. They streamed down from the towers and walls of the fortress, encircling us and cutting off our path to the gate. Soon the women were fighting like no one I’d ever seen, piling the beaten minotaurs up in a makeshift mound beneath us as they dispatched them so that we could fight on higher ground.142

Then one of the women fell, and another, and another, till there were only four of us left standing. It was at that moment that I realized we weren’t going to make it. There were too many of them. We would have died, too, if Drake and Tessa hadn’t realized where I had gone.

While all of this had been taking place, they were organizing a rebel force to storm the fortress. It was a doomed mission, of course, until all of the minotaurs left their posts on the wall and came down to fight us. After that, it wasn’t too hard for one of the rebels to scale the wall and open the gate for the others.

They arrived just in time.

When the minotaurs realized what had happened, they became enraged and began to fight harder. The reinforcements that had been cutting a path to us were stopped in their tracks. For a moment, the situation looked dire. Then I was hit from behind.

I tumbled down the minotaur pile and landed at the feet of a particularly large, one-eyed beast. When I hit the ground, he glanced down at me and then flicked the tip of his short sword across my stomach. My eyes went wide with shock, and I tried to scream, but before I could, my codex went suddenly hot. I felt the heat spreading through my body, moving to the cut. A second later, the wound was gone, and I was whole again.143

The minotaur blinked at me in confusion, then frowned at his sword. A second later, he dropped the sword and raised a heavy ax instead. I tried to move, but he brought a boot down on my ankle, pinning me in place. Just as he swung, someone grabbed my wrist and pulled hard, swiveling me out of the way just in time. The ax bounced off the stone and the minotaur roared.

I looked down at my wrist to see a boy of about sixteen. He had coal-black eyes and tousled hair, and he looked nearly as scared as I felt. He must have seen me fall, I realized. He must have broken from his group to come and save me.

He gave me a weak, resigned smile and was tackled by four minotaurs at once. I rushed to his aid but was forced to retreat when a giant club narrowly missed my head and one of the minotaurs charged me. I managed to make it back to the group, who had now reached the three surviving women, and together we fought our way back out of the fortress and into the woods. Over the next few hours, more rebels were roused and the minotaurs, taken by surprise, and weakened by the loss of their leader, were driven out of the fortress.

The boy with coal-black eyes was never found, and no one recognized my description of him. I’m sure that he died. Died for me. A stranger. He probably didn’t think much about his actions when he did it. No doubt he jumped in simply because that was the kind of person he was. But the fact of the matter is, if he hadn’t done it, I would have died. And then the world—the universe—would have been a profoundly different place.

I regret that I never learned his name.

15. Rellik’s Heir

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

—Benjamin Disraeli144

When the fighting was over and it was clear that Kai had been restored to power, Drake, Tessa, and I decided that we did not want to stay long. According to Drake’s calculations, we had still only been gone from Skelligard for about a half an hour, so we were all eager to get back and see what had become of Hawk and the Horror of Cain.

Before she would let us go, Queen Kai insisted that we join her at the sacred cave where we had first met. When we got there, we found her waiting for us. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black cloth, like a bathing suit, and she held a long spear. She smiled at us when we arrived and proceeded to unfold the secret she had been keeping since our arrival.

“We have been waiting for you for a long time,” she announced. She pointed to the mosaic above us. On one side, Rellik was giving a red stone to a king on his throne. On the other, a queen on the same throne was giving a stone to a young man.

“The artist did not depict you very well,” Kai said apologetically, indicating the second image. “But Rellik told us you would be coming. Once, our world was in danger of destruction by the giants, and Rellik came to slay the giant king. We gave him Tuloth’s shin bones as a token of our gratitude, and he entrusted to our keeping a certain stone that was in his possession. He said that one day our world would be in danger again, and his heir, another Fayter, would come to save it. He said that when you did, we should give you his stone.”

“You don’t think…” Drake began, but Tessa shushed him.

“My family has kept the stone for generations,” the queen said. As she spoke, she waded into the pool until she stood directly beneath the depiction of what I now realized was me and her. “Many know of the story, and some are permitted to come and see the mosaic, but none know the location of the stone save myself.” She raised the spear and pried out the red stone in the mosaic. It fell, and she caught it carefully.

A second later, she laid it in my hand.

“All this time?” Tessa said. “Right out in the open?”

Kai shrugged. “It is as good a place as any to hide the truth.”

Drake and I were staring at the stone. “It’s another bloodstone,” Drake said. “One of Rellik’s lost bloodstones!”

The queen was graciously ignoring our shock. “We owe you a great debt,” she said. “If you ever need a safe haven, know that Daru will be forever open to you.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

I heard a step from the doorway and turned to see the Tike standing there, leaning on a short staff. Her usual black clothing was gone, exchanged for a set of wool traveling clothes. On her back she wore a small leather pack, and her long knives were belted at her hips.

“What are you doing?” I said stupidly.

She cocked her head. “Simon, have you forgotten about the Ardentia? I am bound to you for life. I will not let you slip across the galaxy without me. I have bid farewell to my people, and taken leave of my queen for the present. I stay at your side until our journey is finished, or our lives are ended.”

Tessa sighed. “First day of school, and you’ve already got a girlfriend.”

I blushed furiously, but the Tike just laughed and winked at her. Tessa grinned, and I realized that the two women had come to some sort of understanding without me.

The Tike gave Queen Kai a long embrace, then turned back to me. “Well? Are we leaving or not?”

I nodded and let my friends grab hold of my arms. Then I reached inside my coat and turned E6, the little knob that had started it all.

In case you forgot about the whole space-time continuum predicament, let me remind you that it was still an unlucky day back on Skelligard. Therefore, we returned to find that the Horror of Cain had escaped Stores and all of the masters had gone to find it. Except Ioden.

They left him behind to watch over the school.

Right after we got back, Ioden found us. He told us that he was going to imprison us and then poked me in the chest, at which point the Tike grabbed his finger and folded him into a pretzel. I managed to stop her before she cut out his tongue for “addressing her Ardent like a common criminal.” She was disappointed that we had to leave him alive, but when I explained that he was one of my teachers, she agreed to accompany me to my cell. She would not agree to give up her weapons, and Ioden didn’t force the matter. Actually, he seemed very embarrassed at being taken down by a woman. I wasn’t sure if this would make Ioden leave me alone in the future, or just make matters worse, but either way, I was glad to have seen it happen.

Who knew that there was a prison on Skelligard? It was a small thing, in a high tower directly above the grand hall, with a little window overlooking the city. Judging by the cobwebs, we were its first occupants in a good while.

Of the four of us, Drake took our imprisonment the worst.

“What will Dad say?” he cried. “All he asked me to do was stay out of trouble. ‘Keep your nose down, son. Hit the books.’ And what did I do? Agh!” He smashed his horns against the cold iron bars of our cage.

“Chill out, cow boy,” Tessa said. “We’re not in as much trouble as you think. They probably just locked us in here because all the masters are busy trying to catch—”

“THE HORROR OF CAIN!” Drake wailed. “We released the Horror of Cain! What’s Dad going to say?”

“Well,” I said patiently, “if you tell him the whole story, I bet he’ll be pretty impressed that you established yourself as the most powerful minotaur in a whole army and then helped save Daru from a ruthless dictator.”

He relaxed visibly at my words. “Right. Forgot about that. It’s weird, you know. I mean, we’ve only been back a few minutes, but already the whole thing seems like dream. It’s like we never left.”

“It feels pretty real to me,” I said, holding up my pinky stump. “But I know what you mean. Drake, why do you care so much what your dad thinks, anyway?”

Drake’s face went tight again. He rubbed his temples. “Why? Just because my father was the first minotaur ever to be a Bright. A Bright, in a race of Strongs and Quicks. Do you know how our people reacted? Not well. He’s had a horrible life. Bullied, persecuted, nearly killed half a dozen times, but did he give up? No. He became one of the foremost Brights of his age. His research on gernoblepods145 changed the world. He’s finally got some respect among the minotaurs. And what do I do?”

“You bring shame on the family?” I guessed.

“I bring shame on the family!” He jabbed me in the chest with a finger. “And it’s all your fault. You and your Fayter powers, and your cute little jacket—”

“And his smug attitude,” the Tike offered.

Drake turned to her, his face breaking into a smile. “Tike, that reminds me. It was amazing, what you did to Ioden.”

She shrugged. “I am sorry I mistook your teacher for an enemy.”

“I’m not.”

It was silent for a while as each of us became lost in our own thoughts. I wondered how long it would take Gladstone to learn that Ioden had locked us up. Would he approve? I wondered if what Drake had said was true. We had certainly done good things on Daru, but with the Horror of Cain, had we done something so terrible that people would never forget it? My decisions were starting to affect my friends. I’d done one little thing and now their lives might never be the same. And they had stuck by me. What had I done for them in return?

“Guys,” I said, “there’s something I have to tell you.”

I explained about my luck. When I had finished, Drake wasn’t surprised. He had figured I’d had some sort of hidden Fayter powers all along.

“Any other dangerous secrets we should know about?” Tessa said.

I perked up at this. “My laughter heals incurable diseases.”

Drake blinked. “Really?”

“No.”

Tessa laughed and punched him in the arm.

We passed a few minutes in silence, then I said, “Tessa, what about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ve heard how Drake feels. Aren’t you worried what your family will say about all this?”

She shrugged. “I’m the first wizard my family’s produced in years. We could get expelled today and they’d just be proud that I was here at all.”

“Good,” Drake said, “because we might be.”

Just then, there was a loud cheer from outside.

We moved to the window together and saw, far beneath us, a long line of bedraggled-looking wizards walking up from the lower gate. Each of them carried a rope, and each rope was tied around the neck of a figure at their center, a man with skin the color of ash.

“They caught him,” I said with relief.

“Those aren’t all masters,” Tessa pointed out. “Who are the others?”

“They must have called in the Circle of Eight,” Drake said. “The whole Circle! Look, I can see Gladstone and Hawk and Soren, and Tinnay and…Uh oh.”

I had seen it, too. One of the wizards had stumbled on the cobblestones. His rope went slack for a moment and the Horror of Cain jerked to one side, tugging two more ropes away from his captors.

“Oh no!” Tessa said, gripping the window bars. “He’s getting away!”

“Look at Hawk!” Drake exclaimed.

It was hard to see details from so high up, but a frumpy-looking wizard had settled himself between the Horror and the road to the castle, cutting off his escape. A second later, Hawk was launched into the air like a rag doll, and the Horror was free. It came barreling up the winding cobblestone road at full speed, taking whole houses and stairways in a single bound.

“He’s heading for Fluff,” Drake said quietly. “All the students…”

The wizards were falling behind, struggling to keep up with the Horror. Tessa had seen it, too. “They won’t make it,” she said.

“Drake,” I said quickly, “we’re still on Skelligard time, right? I mean, it’s three days ago here, right?”

He looked confused for a second, then his eyes widened. “The turncoat,” he said. “It might have reset to Skelligard time!” He shook his head as if clearing it. “In fact, even if it hasn’t, the coat is still running on Daru time, and we’ve already been back from Daru longer than we were there in the first place. All the knobs should work!”

I strode to the door of the cell, turned A3 (Curse), and punched the bars, blowing them to smithereens.

Then I turned B1 (Leap) and jumped out of the tower.

We were a little higher up than I had anticipated, and I didn’t land quite as softly as I would have liked. In fact, I managed—very unluckily—to land on the only stained-glass skylight in the whole roof of the grand hall. Needless to say, I broke through it and continued to fall. Thankfully, there was enough magic left over from B1 that I didn’t break my legs at the bottom, but it was nothing like my soft landing when I fell from the stalactite.

Even as the broken glass fell around me, I saw the gray form of the Horror rushing toward the grand hall. He would have to pass right in front of it to get to Fluff. I leapt to my feet, then stopped, turning to look up at the sword of Rellik. Unarmed as I was, about to fight the Horror of Cain, a magic sword might come in handy.

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach, and suddenly I had a gut feeling. I’d say I was feeling lucky, but this was an unlucky day, so that couldn’t have been it. Either way, I knew exactly what to do: Since I didn’t have any pebbles on me, I took the bloodstone from Daru out of my pocket and hurled it with all my might.

The glass case cracked. Then broke. Then shattered, and the sword fell, spinning end over end to land cleanly in my outstretched hand.146

I scooped up the bloodstone from where it had landed, tucked it back into its pocket, and made for the door. A second later, I burst out into the central courtyard just as the Horror was sprinting past.

“Stop!” I cried, and for some reason he did. Maybe he recognized me from our earlier meeting, or maybe it was just fate. Either way, he turned from the road that led to Fluff and entered the courtyard.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you kill my friends,” I said casually.

The gray man sneered at me, moving slowly closer. “I’m afraid I can’t let you live.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you live,” I mimicked in a girly voice. “Honestly, did you flunk your intimidation class at monster school?”

The Horror glared at me and I raised the sword. “Remember this? It belonged to the last guy that kicked your butt. Now it belongs to me.”

The Horror eyed the sword but kept advancing.

“What?” I said. “Not scary enough?” I glanced down at the sword. It was old. Tarnished. Rusting in several places. “I guess it probably looked different last time you saw it, eh?” I thought of Hawk’s sword, wreathed in flame. I thought of my friends watching from above. I thought of Fluff, and the students, and the terrible things that would happen if the Horror wasn’t stopped.

And then I felt butterflies in my stomach.

I raised the sword and shouted, “GIBEAH!” Blue flame erupted from the hilt, blazing into the sky like a sapphire star.

The Horror lunged for me and I brought the sword down, fire and all, right on his head. He raised his arm and the sword took off his hand instead. He screamed and doubled back, running for the street, but he wasn’t getting out that way.

Seven wizards stood there, calm and quiet. They had been watching us, waiting to step in, and now swords appeared in their hands too, wrapped in fire of all colors—red, gold, blue, white, green.

Just when I thought they would attack, a giant midnight-blue dugar shot into the air from behind them and smashed into the Horror’s chest. The Horror threw Finnegan off, but he was not alone. Other creatures were joining the battle: A silver hawk slid from the sky and sliced the Horror’s face with a wing as sharp as a razor’s edge; another beast circled around to cut off its retreat—a mechanical horse of gold and steel with jeweled eyes and a face like the inner workings of a clock; a rust-colored bear lumbered over a rooftop and brought the Horror to the ground with a single swipe of his massive paw. Panicking, the Horror screamed and leapt away from the creatures, charging the wizards instead. Without thinking, I raised my flaming sword in the air at the same time they did, charged him from behind, and eight fires converged as one within the writhing force.

There was a white flash of light, a final, desperate scream, and the Horror of Cain was no more.

16. Consequences

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell, A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel-bell.

—Richard Francis Burton147

You would think that the aftermath of a victory like that would be wonderful, but it wasn’t. The rest of that night was a blur of questions, answers, and lies. I refused to tell anyone where we had gone, how I had retrieved the sword, who the Tike was, pretty much anything that they wanted to know. Eventually they tired of me and sent me to bed.

The next evening (lucky, in case you lost track), when everyone had calmed down, I was summoned to the grand hall to stand before the school council. I left the Tike outside in the courtyard and went in alone. Even though Drake had warned me about what might happen next, I still wasn’t prepared for it.

As in admissions, the council was there behind their long table. Unlike admissions, I was made to stand on the Block.

It’s a big piece of petrified wood, cut into a three-foot cube. Drake said he’d heard it was an executioner’s block from back when the masters could kill students for being dangerously reckless or stupid.148 Now they just made you stand on it when they wanted you to feel uneasy.

As soon as I was on the Block, I noticed Hawk. There was a pulsing yellow haze around his head, which I assumed was some sort of magical bandage; the whole right side of his face was slashed from top to bottom, and his right eye was split in two. Wounds, no doubt, from his battle with the Horror of Cain.

My doing.

My heart sank and all my false confidence evaporated. Whatever they did to me, I deserved it.

Gladstone called the meeting to order and said about four words before Ioden interrupted him.

“Excuse me, Master Seer. But in the interest of time, I move that we expel the student at once.”

“Master Bright,” Hawk growled. “The student’s name is Simon Fayter. Surely you’re intelligent enough to remember that.”

I couldn’t believe he was sticking up for me.

“Yes,” Gladstone said. “Thank you, Master Quick. And I’ll thank you not to interrupt me again, Master Bright.”

Gladstone turned to me and leveled a finger. “Tell us everything that happened. Keep in mind we’ve already heard Master Hawk’s account, so we’ll know if you are lying.”

I told them everything.

Almost everything.

I made it sound like I practically kidnapped Drake and Tessa and that they were not to blame at all. I also made it sound like the bottle tipped over and released the Horror by itself. And obviously I left out the whole thing about Daru. It was a risk, but it didn’t seem like the right time to explain that I was a massive hero. It may sound strange to you that I was feeling so humble in light of my recent swashbuckling defeat of the Horror, but the truth is it had done a lot of damage. I wasn’t sure how much yet, but it was clear that Hawk was badly injured. If rumors were true, four people had nearly murdered each other while under the influence of the Horror. And worst of all, my mother had been told that I had intentionally tried to ruin the world. I was feeling pretty low.

“What happened to your pinky?” Gladstone asked.

“I tripped,”

“Or perhaps you fell through a skylight?” Hawk suggested, pointing up at the whole in the roof.

“How did you retrieve the sword of Rellik?” Gladstone asked.

“I threw a stone at the glass, and it broke.”

“Where is the sword now?”

“I must have lost it during the battle,” I said. (To prevent it from being “reclaimed” by the school, the Tike had hastily buried the sword in the garden when no one was looking. She has some animalistic tendencies…)

“Who taught you to conjure the Midnight Blue?”

I glanced at Hawk, who gave the barest hint of a shrug. “I…learned it from a…mime.”

“Where did you go when you disappeared from Stores?” Gladstone asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It was just…dark for a while, and then we were back.”

“And where did you get the keys to Stores?” Ioden asked.

I hung my head. “I stole them from Hawk,” I admitted. “I’m sorry, Master Hawk.”

“No, you’re not,” Hawk said easily.

“I am,” I insisted, looking at his face. It was the truth. Kind of. If I wasn’t sorry for stealing his keys, I was at least sorry for losing them somewhere in the forest on Daru. At least, I think that’s where they went.

“Very well,” Gladstone said with a sigh. “Simon, you will be pleased to hear that after a thorough search of Skelligard, we have determined that no one died as a result of your actions last night.”

I let out a breath.

“The most egregious consequences of your actions were suffered by Master Hawk. As you are unfamiliar with wizarding medicine, I feel the need to inform you that his face will heal up nicely, but that he will never regain the use of his right eye. Apart from the other punishments you will receive today, you will owe Master Hawk a lifelong debt for the service he has performed for you in assisting to reverse your actions.”

I looked at Hawk again, my stomach in knots. For a second, I thought he winked at me. Then I realized that with his face the way it was, he was probably just blinking.

Gladstone cleared his throat. “Do you have anything to say in your own defense?”

This is what I had been waiting for. “Yes,” I said as contritely as possible. “I want to make it clear that everything that happened was my fault. Drake and Tessa have already suffered enough by all this, and if it’s at all possible I would like to be held accountable for any wrong actions on their part.”

“How noble,” Ioden said tersely.

“Thank you,” Gladstone said loudly, cutting off further argument. “We will keep this in mind. Anything else?”

“Just that I didn’t really mean any harm,” I said. That was true. I also didn’t try very hard to avoid causing harm, but I left that part out. Then I told them the most important part, at least in my mind.

“I’m not like the other students here. I know this. You know this. I’m a Fayter, and I don’t fit in, and there’s no clear path for me. I know what I did might have been wrong, but honestly, I was doing what I thought was necessary in order to become a Fayter. I know people got hurt, and I wish they hadn’t, but if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change anything.”

A few of the masters squirmed uncomfortably at this, but Gladstone just nodded. “You are dismissed while we discuss your fate.”

He pointed to a door on the other side of the room, and I gladly hopped off the Block. For a minute, I imagined that I would be able to go and talk with Drake and Tessa while I waited, but as soon as I opened the door, I realized that was not the case. The room beyond was a tiny, windowless closet. When I closed the door behind me it was completely dark, and I could hear nothing of the conversation in the other room. It was a holding cell. There was no chair, so I slumped against a wall and slid to the floor.

I let my mind wander for a few minutes and then took stock of my thoughts. I was surprised at how calm I felt about the whole thing. Maybe it was because I knew deep down that it wasn’t my fate to stay at Skelligard, or maybe I just hadn’t been there long enough to get attached to the place, but more than anything I was worried about Drake and Tessa.149

It seemed like hours before Gladstone came and got me, but it was probably more like twenty minutes. He returned me to the Block and took his seat at the table.

I scanned the masters’ faces. Hawk was unreadable. Ioden looked smug. I also noticed that there was now a little black box on the table in front of Gladstone.

“Simon Fayter,” Gladstone began, “in light of the candor that you have displayed at these proceedings, we have granted your request regarding your friends. They will not be held accountable for whatever part they may have played in the incident.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling guilt fall from my shoulders like a weight.

Gladstone held up a hand. “You, however, must answer for what has occurred.” He picked up a sheet of paper and read: “By unanimous vote of this council, you have been found guilty of the following crimes against Skelligard: violating the trust of your sponsor, theft, divulging confidential information, reckless endangerment of fellow students and staff, performing magic specifically forbidden by a master, destruction of an ancient artifact, destruction of school property, and release of a Class Five abhorrent force.150 As punishment for these crimes, you are hereby and forevermore expelled from Skelligard.”

Gladstone opened the box and took out what looked like a solid gold stamp. He raised it high and then brought it down on the sheet of paper he’d been reading from.

There was a soft thump on the table, followed by a cracking sound from beneath my shirt. Two bronze half-circles bounced off the block beneath my feet and I bent to pick them up. They’d broken my codex.

Ioden clapped.

Hawk raised a hand.

“Yes, Master Quick?” Gladstone said.

“I would like to point out that the boy has offered undeniable evidence of his identity as the foretold Fayter, in opening Rellik’s chest, in operating the turncoat successfully, and in retrieving and wielding Rellik’s sword.”

“Agreed,” Shea said.

“Aye,” Boris growled.

“As such,” Hawk went on, “in light of our young Fayter’s expulsion from Skelligard, I note that he will be needing an alternative education and request the council’s blessing to take him on as my apprentice.”

“All in favor?” Gladstone said.

Five hands went up.

“Granted.”

“WHAT?” Ioden screamed.

“Also,” Hawk continued, “as instructing Simon will likely take up whatever time I do not already spend serving the Circle of Eight, I request to be released from my role as a master of Skelligard.”

Gladstone nodded. “Very well, you’re fired.”

“This is outrageous!” Ioden ranted. “You can’t do it!”

“Ioden,” Hawk said, “I never thought I’d see the day when you would argue against me being fired. It’s quite touching.”

“Council dismissed,” Gladstone said.

Hawk threw his arm over my shoulder and swept me from the room.

I remember thinking in that moment that things had turned out better than I ever could have imagined. Expelled from the school, sure. But no more lessons with Ioden, and I wouldn’t ever have to study anything useless again. I’d get to hang out with Hawk all day and learn powerful magic from a master who appreciated my brilliance. He’d watch over me, and through his careful tutelage, I would become a powerful wizard in no time. And we’d make pancakes and roast marshmallows on weekends. Best of all, I had been freed from the confines of my codex! Everything would be perfect.

Boy, was I wrong…

17. The Lightning Tree

Worlds turn upon the backs of unseen angels.151

—Simon Fayter152

I have a confession to make: This story does not have a happy ending. I’m talking about the whole series here, not just this book. Yes, it’s going to be a series. Did you think I could tell it all in one volume? It’s a good ending, a satisfying ending, but not an overly happy one. If you have a problem with that, you should read something else. Also, you should watch out. For life, which is so often bittersweet throughout, sometimes ends that way as well.

As soon as we were back outside, Hawk saw the Tike for the first time.153 Seeing them size each other up was like watching two old predators about to fight over the same piece of meat. Just when I thought things would get bad, Hawk flashed a surprisingly handsome smile and gave the Tike a deep bow.

“My lady,” he said. “What shall I call you?”

“You may call me Tike,” she said, bowing her head in return.

Hawk raised an eyebrow. “Not the Tike, surely. The legendary Antediluvian warrior?”

“You’re a legend?” I asked her.

“Obviously,” she said.

Hawk clapped me on the back. “Daru! Excellent. I underestimated you, my boy. Gone to Daru and brought back the Tike! Wouldn’t have believed it. Must have had a serious adventure, too. How long were you there? Three days? Can’t believe she came back with you. Antediluvians are notoriously stubborn about leaving Daru, you know. That’s why I’ve met so few. Why, if I didn’t know better I’d say you…” He stood there, glancing from me to the Tike and back again. His one hawk-like eye flicked to the white oval emblazoned on her cheek. “Sweet blue blazes! You’re her Ardent.”

The Tike tensed visibly, unbalanced by his acumen.154

“Well,” he said, “this is awkward, isn’t it? You his Ardent, me his master. Both intimate bonds, and yet we haven’t been properly introduced. Let’s blame Simon, shall we? He is a bit of a blundering idiot.”

The Tike grinned appreciatively at this. Why she let Hawk talk bad about me when she had practically skinned Ioden for doing the same thing the day before was beyond me. (Women are a mystery. Especially nine hundred-year-old ones.)

“Hey now,” I said, sensing trouble.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Hawk said, putting an arm around her shoulder and leading her into the courtyard. “As far as I’m concerned, from tomorrow onwards, you and Simon are a package deal. You’re welcome to attend all our lessons—if indeed we have any—and you may be as silent or as outspoken as you wish. In return, I will ask you to relay to me whatever reckless misadventures he engages in when I am not around. We could meet, say, once a week? Over lunch?”

“That sounds lovely,” she said.

“Hey…” I began.

“Of course,” Hawk went on, “I will need him all to myself for the next hour or so, to take care of a private matter.”

“Of course,” she said, and without so much as a backward glance to me, she departed.

Hawk gave me an amused look. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, do you.” He turned to me and poked me in the chest. “Now, go and fetch that sword—don’t look at me like that. You have obviously secreted it somewhere. Buried it in the garden or some such. Go and get it. You are about to need it.”

Twenty minutes later, we were at the top of the castle, on the highest point in all of Skelligard. It was called the cloister: a rectangular open-air garden surrounded by columns and a covered patio. He led me to the middle of the garden and bade me look up into the sky.

“There is no world to be seen here,” he said. “Just you and the sky. Your soul and the infinite.”

It was true. We were so high that it seemed as if I could reach out and touch the sky. At the same time, the walls of the garden prevented me from seeing anything below us.

“You have gone on a mission,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You have found the turncoat, and it contained a bloodstone. Am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“And it allowed you to travel a great distance?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “It will do so again. This is the heritage of all members of the Circle of Eight. Each of us possess a bloodstone that allows us to travel to where we are needed. As you do now. It is the role of a knight to accept such missions and complete them. As such, we are servants of fate. Did you complete your mission, Simon?”

“Yes,” I said. “We went to Daru and—”

He held up his hand. “I don’t care so much what you did. What did you learn?”

I hesitated, mulling over everything that had happened. Obviously I’d learned a ton—about Daru and its culture and history, about the turncoat, about Drake and Tessa—but that wasn’t what he was asking.

I dug deep, looking for something impressive. Then I gave up and turned B2 (Silvertongue). The last three days in Daru washed over my mind like a warm wave, and there it was, the pivotal moment, the thing that had touched me deep: the boy with coal-black eyes. He had made all the difference. He, in his one small action, was the hero of my story. And I didn’t even know his name. I hadn’t even seen him coming.

In a wave of turncoat-enhanced eloquence, I told him. “I learned that worlds turn upon the backs of unseen angels.”155

Hawk considered me for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “That,” he said, “is a good thing to learn. You should always remember it.” He sighed. “That knowledge may hold the difference between happiness and misery for you one day, as it does for most of us.”

He took a step back from me, and suddenly I became aware of others watching us. Figures stepped out from behind columns to either side and joined us in the garden.

It was them. The Circle of Eight. Gladstone, Atticus, Soren, Martaes, Braccus, and Tinnay. I wasn’t even sure in each case which name belonged with which face, but I recognized them from the night before.

“Give me your codex,” Hawk said.

I dug in my pocket and handed over the two broken half-circles.

Hawk held them up, then bent over and buried them beneath a handful of earth. When he stood back up, his sword was in his hand. The other knights had their swords out, too. A youthful, dark-haired knight (I think she was Tinnay) had a slender, curving saber. Atticus had two swords.156 They raised their swords into the air together. They didn’t cross them like in the movies; they held them vertically in front of their chests. It took a second before I realized that they were waiting for me to join them. We were standing in a circle, after all, and I was a part of it, so I raised my sword, too.

Hawk spoke then, and although his words sounded like a prayer, his voice was as calm and natural as a child talking to his friend.

“Zohar,” he said, “we implore you, grant this friend his place and power. Plant him deep within his law. Write his name within the heart of fate, and may his fruit repay.”

At the end of his words, there was a silence so swift and fleeting that I nearly missed it. Then a band of white-hot lightning jumped between the earth and sky and a curl of black smoke rose from the patch of dirt where Hawk had buried my broken codex.

Something white broke the surface, twisting, rising up. It glittered and sparked, and I recognized it as a piece of the lightning that had come and gone. It rose and branched and grew into a tree, simple and resplendent—a thing from Heaven, planted in the earth. And then the tip of the highest branch unrolled to reveal a glowing golden fruit. A medallion of bronze.

Hawk took it, and the tree vanished like a dream, gone as suddenly as lightning goes, leaving nothing but an afterimage in its wake.

Hawk handed me the remade codex and I examined it. It was as clean and new as when I had first received it. My code was written clearly on the back, same as before, but the face of the medallion was changed. Instead of Skelligard, it now held an image of eight swords, upraised around a gleaming tree.

I looked up at Hawk, and he smiled at me. “Remember this moment, Simon. Remember: the power that matters most in life is that which we have over ourselves.”157

I nodded. “I will.”

“Good!” The dark-haired woman I had noticed earlier slapped me on the back, grinning widely. “Now stop being so serious, Hawk. The ceremony’s over.”

“Simon,” Hawk said, “this is Tinnay Quick. My former student and pest.”

“You listen to old Hawk, Simon. He’ll steer you right.” She winked at me. “And I daresay you’ll do him some good as well. Already gave him a facelift, I see. Good for you. Tried it a few times myself, but I always missed.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but it didn’t matter; she was gone a second later, replaced by another knight, and then another. Soon I had met them all. Soren, with her sad eyes and ancient smile. Martaes, with her quick and lively voice. Braccus, with his dark skin and strange accent. They all exchanged pleasantries and told me to listen to Hawk. Braccus told me he was impressed that I could already call the Midnight Blue, and Hawk promptly pointed out that it had probably been a fluke.

When it was all over, Hawk walked me back down the long stone staircase that led to the lower levels.

“That was amazing,” I said. “I didn’t know that you guys could remake a codex. Drake is going to freak when I tell him about this.”

Hawk grinned, and we walked in silence for another minute, lost in our own thoughts. Finally, I summoned the courage to ask him the question on my mind. It seemed silly, but after today, I doubted that he would be too mad at me for it.

“Hawk,” I said, “do you think that someday I could join the Circle of Eight?”

Hawk stopped dead in his tracks. He gave me a strange, searching look, which resolved quickly to surprise. Then shock. Then anger. “Join us?” He took me by the shoulders and shook me. “JOIN US? Simon Fayter, you blithering goatsniffer! You—just—DID!”

Hawk lectured me about paying attention and using my brain for the next twenty minutes straight. When he was done, we were in the central square again. A girl walked past us and waved to me. Something about her reminded me of Mistress Zie.

“Holy smokes!” I said.

Hawk grinned. “That’s called a girl, Simon. Her name is Lorey Muse, actually, and she’s quite nice. I expect with all the stories sweeping the school, you will have to learn how to respond when a girl waves at you.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I’ve just remembered something!” How long had it been since my coat had stopped twitching? Was Zie all right in there? I’m sure she was. But what should I do with her now?

“Simon,” Hawk said slowly, “what’s going on?”

“Okay. Do you remember that argument that Atticus and Ioden had at my admissions? The one about that girl, McKenzie?”

Hawk frowned. “Yes.”

“We found her. On Daru. She was trying to take over the world. We think she’s one of the Fallen.”

Hawk’s one remaining eyebrow shot sky high. “What happened?”

“We beat her,” I said.

“And where is she now? Dead?”

“Nope. She’s in my pocket.”

Hawk stared at me, then eyed the turncoat thoughtfully. “Really? Is she all right in there?”

“I’m pretty sure. She was fighting to get out for a while, but then she stopped, and then we came back here and it sort of…slipped my mind.”

“Indeed.” Hawk stared at my coat for another minute. I could practically see the gears turning in his head. Finally, an evil grin spread across his face. “Well, since Ioden is the one who lost her, I think the best thing to do is return her to him. Don’t you agree?”

As Ioden’s rooms were just off the courtyard, it didn’t take us long to get there. Hawk knocked on his office door and Ioden called out, “Enter.”

Hawk stuck his head in and then pushed open the door, leading me into the room.

Ioden leaned back from his desk and glowered at us. “What are you two doing here? Come to gloat? I thought you were supposed to be above all that.”

“Oh no,” Hawk said. “I’m sure I’m not above anything. Speaking of which, I believe Simon here has found something of yours.”

Ioden frowned. “What?”

I turned E8 and McKenzie appeared in the center of Ioden’s office. She wobbled slightly, then steadied herself and looked around to get her bearings.

“You’re at Skelligard, my dear,” Hawk said helpfully. He pointed to Ioden. “You might not recognize him, but that man there is the one who let the Jackal capture you back on Earth. I’m not sure what you want now, but whatever it is, you should take it up with him.”

She whirled on Ioden, who looked like someone had just sucked out his brain.

Hawk shut the door, just as a noise like a hurricane erupted from the room beyond. He beamed at me. “That was excellent, Simon. Really tremendous. What else have you got in your pockets?”

“Actually,” I said, taking off my boot, “there is someone else that you should meet.” I waved my boot with a flourish, expecting Leto to tumble out dramatically, but nothing happened. He was gone.

Suddenly I felt rather foolish, holding my boot in the air like that with nothing to show for it.

“Hmm,” Hawk said, eyeing my rather sweaty sock with mild interest. “And does your foot have a name?”

“Uh…”

Hawk nodded to himself. “I think you have had enough action for one day. Get some rest. Tomorrow, the real work begins.”

When I made it back to Fluff and brought Drake and Tessa up to speed, I discovered that I had been right about Drake: Upon learning that I had been expelled from Skelligard, assigned to Hawk as an apprentice, and made the newest knight of the Circle of Eight, he passed out cold.

As usual, Tessa wasn’t surprised. “I mean, you did use the sword,” she said. “When I saw you down there fighting right alongside the Circle, fire and all, it just made sense that this was coming. Honestly, I thought they might make you wait a few years until you weren’t such an ignorant, immature, impulsive—”

“Thanks, Tessa,” I said. “You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”

“Oh, you’ll have enough people to make you feel special. My job is to let all the hot air out of your head when they get done.”

Eventually, we revived Drake. When he was back to his normal self again, we all gathered around the table and he insisted upon hearing the whole story all over again, during which he interjected a constant stream of questions and comments about various members of the Circle of Eight. Toward the end of my story, one of Drake’s questions was interrupted by a thunderous noise. It was so loud it shook the ground (or rather, the Fluff) beneath our feet. Several voices shouted in surprise and birds cried in fright, taking to the air. Drake and Tessa were both on their feet, looking worried.

“W-what was that?” Drake said.

“Don’t worry guys,” I said. “That sounds like Leto.”

“He’s not with you?” Tessa said.

I shook my head. “I noticed he had left my boot earlier today. My guess is he went looking for his brother. Sounds like he found him.”

“He doesn’t sound too happy about it,” Drake said. He gulped. “Do you think he’ll be coming back? To you, I mean?” Drake didn’t look happy at the prospect.

“I don’t know.”

“Certainly he will.” We all jumped as Leto descended out of the cool night air above us and alighted on the table.

“Yikes!” Drake said. “I mean, uh…” He faltered under the tiny dragon’s stare. “What I mean to say is, you got here fast. We just heard that roar a second ago.”

“Ah, heard that, did you?” Leto paced along the edge of the table, looking at us each in turn. “Yes. My little brother did not wish to return to Daru, but I…persuaded him. It will do well for him to spend some time again among the remainder of our race, since he seems to have forgotten where he came from.”

“And you?” I said. “Are you, uh, staying?” I glanced sideways at my boot.

“Obviously,” he said. “Your boots are incredibly warm, and though I do find you quite boring, you are a Fayter, and now a member of the Circle of Eight, and therefore destined for an interesting adventure or two. I shall stay until such time as you are dead, or I get bored with you.”

Drake’s mouth fell open in disbelief, but I just smiled. “Good, then,” I said. “I’m sure my boots would feel weird without you in them.”

Leto gave me a curious look, somewhere between appreciation and suspicion. “You do sleep with your boots on, don’t you?”

“Uh, sure.” I did now, anyway.

He beamed. “Excellent. I expect that we shall get along just fine, then.” And with that, he disappeared into my boot, curling up beside my ankle.

We spent the rest of the night together, just the three (four) of us. It was nice to feel normal again. To just be together.

Hours later, when they fell asleep, I found myself lying awake, thinking about what a marvelous change had occurred in my life over the last few days.

Thanks to the turncoat, I had a slew of dangerous and wonderful new skills. Thanks to Rellik and the bloodstones, I had a mystery to solve and an adventure to seek. Thanks to the Circle of Eight, I had a cool new club and a code to live by. Thanks to fate (and a missing finger), I had three amazing friends. And most important of all, thanks to my brilliant hand-eye coordination and impeccable luck, I had a sword of my very own.

What more could a boy want?

Epilogue: The Doors of Bone

Fair warning: the ending might make you angry. You should just stop reading now.

What more could a boy want?

Answers. That’s what.

After my little parade of mental positivity, I became restless. My friends were asleep, but my mind was filled with questions. Questions about the bloodstones. About what to do next. About the turncoat…but the question that was bothering me the most was the one that I’d been holding on to since I saw the bone doors in the caverns of Daru. I had seen their intricate carvings before, right here at Skelligard. My suspicions had been confirmed when I saw the bone doors inside the fortress. They looked so much like the Ivory Table. Twice now, I had passed under doors of bone, and twice now, my life had been changed. But as they say, the third time pays for all.

I rose from my bed and walked through Fluff, tentreecles parting silently before me. When I emerged, the Tike was at my side instantly—she was not a student, so Fluff had not permitted her a room of her own, but she had fashioned a hammock and hung it from a nearby tree.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I want to show you something,” I said simply. “Fetch a torch, please, and meet me in the central square.”

If my request surprised her at all, she didn’t show it. Her features were unreadable in the light of the night sky. And then she was gone.

By the time I made it to the central square, the first predawn light could be seen on the eastern horizon. It was strange to me to think of all that had happened since sunset. I had broken into Stores, released a demon, traveled to the other side of the universe, saved a world, been bound to the Tike, and been expelled from the school. After all that, I wasn’t even tired. I just wanted to solve this last part of the mystery—test the strange theory that had been simmering in the corners of my mind.

After a minute, the Tike arrived with a lit torch, and I walked to the center of the square. I stopped in front of the Ivory Table and heard her sharp intake of breath. “This is a bone door,” she said.

I nodded. I thought it might be, ever since I saw the ones on Daru.

“Are these Tuloth’s bones?” she asked. “The ones that my people gave Rellik so long ago?”

“I believe they are.”

I wasn’t sure how to open them, but it occurred to me that if anyone was meant to open them, I was. I tried the simplest option first: I reached into the carvings, hooked my hand inside, and pulled.

That didn’t work.

The Tike tried her luck after that but also failed to open them.

Suddenly I thought of Rellik’s trunk. If Rellik had brought these doors back and used them to hide something right out in the open, could he have sealed them in a similar manner? I raised my undamaged hand, held it above the Ivory Table, and said, “I am Simon Fayter, the heir of Rellik the Seer. Open up, please.”

There was a low grinding noise, and then a puff of dust. A line appeared between what I could now see were two doors. It had been cunningly hidden by the carvings before. The doors swung slowly out and up, revealing a cobweb-covered staircase leading down into the darkness.

I took the torch from the Tike and entered.

It was a tomb.

I had never actually been inside one before, so it took me a while to realize what it was. In a rush, it became clear that the long stone box with the carved lid was no mere box at all, but a sarcophagus.

“Rellik’s tomb,” I said, running my hand over the top of the stone. The carving was of a man in his middle years. He carried a round shield, and upon it was an inscription:

Rellik, son of Ronan, son of Rok

Seer, Fayter, Friend

“What does it say beneath?” the Tike asked.

I hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out. There was a second, fainter inscription below the first. The letters were full of dust and I had to blow them out to read it properly. It said:

Turncoat

5I

“5I?” I said. “What does that mean?”

“The knobs!” the Tike said. “What does 5I do?”

I shook my head. “There is no five I. Anyway, letters come first. The letter is the row, and the column is the number. But E is the last row.”

“Maybe he did it the other way around.” she suggested. “Numbers for rows, and letters for columns.”

I thought about it. “I is the ninth letter of the alphabet, so his 5I would be my E9.”

I put my fingers on the large knob, then hesitated. “But what if that’s not what it means? Or what if he counted from right to left or something, instead of left to right?”

“Just turn it,” the Tike said. “Turn it!”

I did.

There was a flash of white light, and a figure appeared on the other side of the sarcophagus. He was older than I had pictured. His hair was thin and white, but the face was unmistakable. I think I would have recognized him even if I hadn’t seen the ancient portrait that Ioden had showed us in class the previous morning.

“Rellik,” I whispered.

Rellik the Seer smiled warmly. “Simon Fayter,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

End of Book One

The story continues in Book Two, Simon Fayter and the Tomb of Rone…

CLICK HERE TO START READING

— Excerpt —

Never give your name to a demon.

Everyone knows that. Even I know that, but I did it anyway.

I was hanging from the edge of a cliff, the sky above me dark with clouds and full of the sound of ravens. I could barely hear them over the sound of my own heart racing.

He was here, somewhere above me—the man who I’d been hunting for days.

I jammed my fingers into a mossy crevice in the rock and pulled myself up to peer up over the cliff’s edge. The top of the cliff hosted a circle of standing gray stones whose history had long since passed out of living memory—a fitting place for a meeting such as this.

I pulled myself over the edge and rolled smoothly to hide behind a low boulder, flicking my hand inside my jacket to turn C1 (Chameleon) so that my body shimmered and melded into the color of the stone around me, camouflaging me so effectively that I was rendered nearly invisible.

I steadied my breathing, trying to stay quiet. My mind was racing over the many mistakes I had made in the past; I was determined not to repeat them. The worst of these was to attack right during a sudden lightning storm and getting myself nearly incinerated by a bolt from the blue. I turned A4 (Forecast) and whispered, “Light rain and a cool fifty degrees until midafternoon.” Good. No lightning this time.

I risked a quick glance over my hiding place, scanning for the presence of the enemy, but saw nothing. Remembering the time that I had been ambushed by a pack of bears who had nearly beaten me senseless with clubs made of rainbow trout, I turned A1 (Fish), and tossed a large salmon into the stone circle. It thudded against the cold rock and flopped about, and I strained my ears, listening for the slightest sound of enemy movement. There was nothing.

Abandoning caution, I hopped to my feet and began to prowl through the circle of standing stones, looking for a good place from which to spring my trap. My job was to confront the enemy when he arrived. Then, when I had him engaged in combat and reasonably distracted, Hawk and Atticus would come out of nowhere, surprising him. It was a good plan. I mean, it had never worked before—mostly because I kept getting myself killed before they could arrive to help me—but one of these times I wouldn’t mess up, and we’d be in business…

I had just decided to climb on top of one of the large standing stones and await the arrival of my enemy when there was a tap on my shoulder. Despite days of hard training designed to instill in me a “calm and steady mind,” I gave a throaty yelp and spun wildly about.

To my horror, he was there, gold mask gleaming in the pale light of the moon, red eyes peering out over a jackal’s nose.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said. His voice was deep and confident. “I was hoping you might live through our meeting today, but it looks like that won’t be the case.” He raised a shadowed hand, and an invisible force hurled me against one of the standing stones. “No friends to save you this time?”

“Well,” I said, spitting blood, “you know them. Always late.”

He gave a low chuckle and raised his cloaked arm once more. I knew what was coming next. This was his favorite way to kill me. You’d think that he could come up with something more creative than throwing me off the cliff and watching me tumble into the sea, but I suppose he just liked the classics…

Before the invisible force of his power could touch me, I turned C3 (Sponge), and the magic of my jacket absorbed it, throwing him off balance. I turned B4 (Ninja) and flipped into the air, whipping out the sword I kept strapped across my back and simultaneously turning E8 (Stash). Still airborne, my secret weapon exploded outward from my chest (actually, it came from the magic pocket of my coat that could hold any object, animate or inanimate). This particular object happened to be a 1,000-year-old ninjalike warrior from a distant planet—handy thing to have in your pocket, really—and together we cut the Jackal to ribbons in about three seconds flat. Unfortunately, about 1.5 seconds into those three seconds of Jackal slicing, I shouted, “Ha! No match for Simon Fayter and the Tike, Dogbreath.”

Even as he fell to pieces—laughing evilly, of course—his dark eyes locked on mine, and I felt myself losing control of my body. I tried to fight it for a second or two, but it was no use. I had given my name to a demon (That he had it already is beside the point. My intoning it changed everything.), and in his last lucid moment, he had enslaved me…

Continue Reading...

Footnotes

1Former president of South Africa. He served twenty-seven years in prison for fighting against racism, then changed the world.

2That’s a nice way of saying fat.

3In actual fact, Finnigan is not a gorilla. First off, gorillas are black, not blue. Secondly, Finnigan speaks eighteen languages and does calculus in his head. He is a thing called a dugar, from the planet Kur, and if he knew that I called him a gorilla, or that you smiled at me doing so, he would probably eat us both. But let’s face it, if I had told you that the ficus transformed into a nine-foot-tall midnight-blue dugar, you would have had no idea what I was talking about. Let’s hope he never reads this.

4Stubbornly destructive or uncooperative.

5Not a real disease. It means being cranky from being inside too long.

6The most famous English writer in the history of the world, after J.K. Rowling. Incidentally, I don’t know what the quote means, either, but Shakespeare said it, so it must be brilliant.

7I’ll explain later.

8This is a called a footnote. In nonfiction books and academic texts, footnotes are used to give readers references and other essential information. In this book, I use footnotes to annoy you, identify fake words, share meaningless facts, and otherwise ramble on about things my editor wishes I would just delete.

9Don’t laugh. You’ve done it, too.

10Friends call me Jonah.

11I didn’t even know you can break an earlobe. You can. You have to fall out of an airplane, but you can do it.

12This is not a real word. But if it were, it’d be “me byword. Me twinkle-in-the-eye word.”

13In case you forgot how leap year works, here it is: Each year really has 365.25 days. Because of this, every four years there’s a whole extra day that nobody wants, so we give it to February. On leap years, February has twenty-nine days instead of twenty-eight.

14A comma is a punctuation mark that connects independent clauses, separates introductory elements, breaks up lists, and sets off nonessential information. Commas look like this: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

15A coma is a prolonged or indefinite state of deep unconsciousness, usually caused by illness or severe injury. Just so you can tell your parents that this book is educational, here are some things you didn’t know about comas: Comatose women have been known to carry a baby to full term and then give birth naturally to a healthy child. The longest coma on record lasted for thirty-seven years, one hundred and eleven days.

16I usually avoid beating my head on things if it’s an unlucky day, but thankfully nothing happened; it’s hard to hurt your head on a pillow.

17I’m talking to you, Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.

18This meant that I grew up with some things that other kids didn’t, like cousins on every single continent and a disturbing knowledge of military acronyms.

19Mr. A. hated modern writing instruments. Don’t even think about mentioning computers around him.

20It was one of those pads that are so ugly that you get them for free because nobody will buy them. This one was covered in penguins dressed like Christmas elves.

21Conclusion: doctors are crackpots.

22As it turns out, I may actually be killed by the number 17 in the end.

23A lot of people have little things they carry to make themselves feel safe. For some boys, it’s a pocket knife. For girls, it’s chap stick, or a Taser. For hobbits, it’s cakes and a pocket handkerchief. For me, it’s my DS.

24One of my favorite words. Unfortunately, it just means “the act of tutoring.” It should refer to flatulence, which would give the word a certain onomatopoetic charm. Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like the thing it represents. Examples: Buzz, crash, flap, meow, hiss, woof, hush, toot.

25Porta-Pottys are rarely the best place to hide from things that want to kill you. Most likely, the bad things will find you, roll the Porta-Potty down a hill, and then after you’re good and covered with you-know-what, they’ll kill you anyway. Though they might do it real fast, since you’d stink so bad“

26An Italian saint whose writings have influenced western thought for hundreds of years.

27Just my first impression. Don’t read into it.

28So glad I didn’t wear my “I’m Batman” shirt that day.

29Well, that’s a bit creepy...

30I’ve got a huge ego.

31It probably retreated.

32 Very old.

33Unless you were coming down, of course.

34She was big enough that she might have.

35Mr. A. once told me that “the hallmark of a noble soul is the capacity to behave exactly opposite of how you feel.” He could’ve just said “Fake it till you make it,” but that would have been too easy.

36You should really know who Abraham Lincoln is already. Sixteenth president of the United States. He did some important emancipating in the 1800s, and now he’s on the penny. Including his top hat, he was over seven feet tall. It was a huge hat. Officially, it was a fashion statement. Secretly, he wore it so that he could take his pet chicken with him wherever he went.

37Castley is not a word.

38Megadude isn’t a word either, but it should be. Please help me make it a word by using it all the time. Especially on social media. And at WalMart. Just whisper it as you pass other shoppers.

39A poor simile, since gloves don’t go on feet (A simile—pronounced sim-uh-lee—is a figure of speech that compares one thing with another. Examples: quick as a fox, sharp as a tack, dumb as a brick, smart as a Fayter.)

40Not a word.

41This was the first time that I realized Drake and Tessa were going to be my friends. Real friends: people who care about you more than themselves and often shower you with unearned loyalty, like they were doing right then.

42See how I slipped that in right there? That’s what you have to do.

43Not aunts on a log, which is a classic recipe for a family reunion disaster. I’m talking about that thing you do with peanut butter, celery, and raisins.

44Dang, I was smart.

45It tastes just like it sounds.

46Since they’re somewhere between tentacle and tree, I’m calling them “tentreecles” from now on, until someone thinks of something better, which they probably won’t.

47It’s not like I was trying to spy. I just didn’t correct them when they assumed I was out.

48One of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, Einstein (pronounced EYEn-stine) had an IQ of like five thousand, wore awesome sweaters, and rocked a mop of crazy white hair. He left us with a bunch of cool quotes. Also the general theory of relativity.

49I was pretty full of myself back then. Still am, actually.

50Sorry. But it did.

51Flying squirrels are nuttier than regular squirrels. They get their flying powers from all the extra nuts they eat. Also, I just wanted to use the phrase “flying squirrel nuts.”

52Exhume. A word that usually means digging up a dead person’s body. Creepy? I think yes.

53The slug one doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s freaking funny.

54Soorry, the “OO” key oon my keyboooard just broooke. I’ll fix it.

55Not a word.

56To move from place to place.

57Not easy to do while carrying a leather tube and a sack of jumping mice.

58A famous Chinese general who wrote a snappy little book called The Art of War. The book is 1,500 years old, but it’s still quite popular among stockbrokers, military strategists, philosophy students, and used-car salesmen.

59You should always have a pen in your pocket. It comes in handy frequently for things such as signing credit card receipts, doodling in class, crossing off grocery lists, creating forbidden maps of underground labyrinths.

60At this point, if you are one of those people who always try to pick apart the meaning behind a story, you may think that you have discovered my “fatal flaw.” You think I’m self-centered, over-confident, reckless, power-hungry (all true, of course), etc. You likely assume that this story is about how I confront my flaw and become a better person (understandable, since this is how stories usually work). Now, I am a responsible author, and responsible authors hate to disappoint a reader, so before you get your hopes up, let me remind you of two cold, hard facts: This is the true story, of my real life, and in real life, people rarely change, and things rarely go as expected.

61Gotta catch ‘em all!

62This hasn’t really been a word since Sir Walter Scott used it in 1810 in his poem ‘Highland Boat Song. But I’m bringing it back. Incidentally, the music for “Hail to the Chief” (the song sung for American Presidents) was originally written for that poem.

63It may sound silly that Earth has a strict secrecy policy, but think about it. What would happen if wizards started tweeting about stuff like this? Actually, by writing this book, I’m violating about fourteen intergalactic laws and opening myself to a variety of unpleasant punishments including but not limited to: having my tonsils removed and fed to a cat, being forced to wear pink forever, and life imprisonment on the tiny island of Yip, which is inhabited by four thousand man-size killer bunnies. Needless to say, if my account is ever published on Earth, it will be written under the name of some lesser-known author and marketed as fiction.

64My rash, remember?

65Pronounced “knee-chuh.” A famous German philosopher with a huge mustache. He wrote a bunch of brilliant, scary books that only seven or eight people understand.

66That’s a military acronym (Absent Without Leave). It doesn’t really belong in a story like this, but I threw it in because, like I said, I have family members in the military, and if they ever read this book, they’ll feel more comfortable with a few nonsense acronyms floating around.

67Life is often like this: You are empty of some needed thing—courage, happiness, love—and then without thinking you give it to another, whose need is even greater than your own. Where did it come from? Inside you, of course; it was in you the whole time, buried deep, like a crop hidden in the ground. You couldn’t see it until you shared it. Charity is the soul’s great harvest.

68This is how men communicate the most important things in life: without actually talking. It’s less awkward this way. Of course, there remains the possibility that we really aren’t understanding each other at all, but we don’t care.

69It’s now believed that we experience this response, to a lesser degree, all the time. Not because our life is really in danger, but because we’re stressed out and irrational. We’re worried about what grade we got or because the light turned red and we’re going to be late for work. Or Sally stole our toy again. We freak out and our brains overreact, assuming our life is in danger. Because it happens so often, it makes it easier for us to die from heart disease and what not when we get older, so next time you freak out about something small, take a second to remind yourself it’s not life or death. And in the interest of not getting sued, I remind you that I am not a doctor, and that you should only take health advice from a doctor. But in the interest of satisfying my massive ego, I remind you that I am freakishly smart, and if you’re going to take health advice from a fictional character, you could do worse than me. Examples include Voldemort, Sauron, and the Tasmanian Devil.

70The clever reader will notice that I also just locked us in. Oops.

71A little French dude who conquered most of Europe 200 years ago and was then exiled to a tiny island prison. Little known facts about Napoleon: He was 5’6” tall; not huge, but average for his day. He had ailurophobia (fear of cats). His policies still influence much of modern politics. To this day in France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon.

72Noah Webster was what they call an “English Language Spelling Reformer.” In 1828, he published the American Dictionary of the English Language. This later became the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. I’m sure there are some interesting facts about Noah Webster, but I don’t know any, because at the end of the day he was a professional speller, and that’s pretty boring.

73Darth Fayter, at your service.

74Yeah, she heard me.

75She was the only one you could really still call a “girl.” The rest were undeniably women, including Ninja Girl. But come on, Ninja Woman sounds ridiculous.

76On Earth, this word refers to people who predate Noah’s flood. Also, really old things in general. On Daru, it refers to an ancient race of people.

77It wasn’t that hard to figure out, actually. I am an excellent liar, and therefore very hard to lie to. First off, bathing in the sacred cave pool to bring good fortune to her people, that’s not something a guard does. That’s something the queen does. Duh. Also, Ninja Girl just had something royal about her. Whereas the Tike was a bit, well, surly. Gorgeous, but surly. I wouldn’t have said anything, but I hate being lied to by ninjas.

78It’s too much fun to mouth off in situations where people have no idea what you’re talking about.

79Don’t worry. It passed quickly.

80Often misquoted as “pride goeth before the fall,” by people who have never actually read the Bible. The Book of Proverbs was written by King Solomon, who was considered one of the wisest people ever to walk the earth. Of course, despite his wisdom, Solomon was ultimately a big failure. Maybe wisdom is overrated“

81Never say this to a ninja.

82In all fairness, the Tike’s plan was working. I know it sounds odd, and wrong (and a little evil), but in her defense she was dealing with a student who was neither humble nor teachable, and the only way to get me to be serious was through humiliation. Sad but true.

83“I don’t know what fire lives in the heart of a poet, but it must be that same light that grants you wisdom as a teacher, strength as a soldier, virtue as a leader, and beauty beyond the natural grasp of womankind.”

84I guess I could talk to women like that every day, since I have the turncoat. But let’s face it: I usually end up squandering the gift of the genius knob on more practical applications, like saying just the right thing to avoid being killed by sand pirates, or thinking up really snappy retorts after Ioden insults me, or answering knock-knock jokes before Drake gets to the punch line.

85Including an epic beard.

86Bad breath.

87Maybe. She had knocked me unconscious, slapped me with a fish, called me pretty, and stolen my pants. Twice.

88Chuck Norris can drown a fish.

89Just an expression. Fish don’t have legs. They don’t need them. They can use their fins to walk around on land if they need to. I’ve seen it on TV. Maybe should be located on Page 142?

90Drake’s been shedding. Remember?

91In the 1950s and 60s, Fleming wrote twelve novels and two short-story collections. As of today, the Bond films have made over six billion dollars, making it the third-highest grossing movie franchise in history.

92You probably think I’m joking, but I’m not. Many of the most dangerous things in the world are shiny. Don’t believe me? Scalpels, nuclear blasts, yellow traffic lights, ice, oil, the ocean, the sun, television screens, needles, liquid mercury (I don’t know how dangerous liquid mercury is, but I’m pretty sure you can’t drink it, so it makes the list). On the other hand, has anyone ever been killed by a whiteboard eraser? Or a fuzzy sweater? No.

93If you’ve ever rubbed yourself all over with a wriggling fish, you know how hard it is. If you haven’t, don’t. It’s impossible to get off.

94It’s not easy for a thirteen-year-old boy to do a deep female voice, but I was just that good. Incidentally, I gave her a southern accent.

95I don’t get it, either. Drake brought me some astrophysics books later so that I could figure it out, but they were super boring and I gave up. All I know is that planets on the other side of the gravity thingamajig are termed “dark planets,” and wizards rarely go there because of the weird time issues.

96J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien basically invented the fantasy genre. If you haven’t read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, then for Heaven’s sake put this book down and go do it right now before a group of diehard fantasy geeks catches you and makes you braid their leg-beards! I’m kidding. Keep reading my book. Then go and read Tolkien. I wasn’t kidding about the fantasy geeks, though. They’re dangerous. Especially in large groups with a mob (or Borg) mentality. Ever heard of Comic-Con?

97There was a lot of grunting in a language that I didn’t understand, but other than that, it sounded good.

98I know what you’re thinking, but I’m going to stop you right there. We couldn’t just kill her in her sleep. First off, that’s way too dark for a book like this. Secondly, it’s rude. Third, we were thirteen, and assassination just didn’t occur to us. Most importantly, we didn’t know enough. Did she really want to be an evil tyrant, or was the Jackal making her do it? If she was taken as a child and brainwashed by an evil maniac, then she was a victim, too. No, the best course of action was to confront her in the open and hope for the best.

99Not a word.

100This means “ignorant.” But you can’t use the same word twice in one paragraph. It’s bad writing.

101Some expressions just don’t translate well into Middle-Age terminology.

102Tessa, after all, is a Strong. Even before they are trained, Strongs tend to be, well, stronger than the average person. Tessa was no different.

103In all honesty, Leto didn’t factor into my plan. I just mentioned him to sound impressive.

104I’m so glad that worked“

105Okay, okay. I know this sounds pretty dark. But let’s think about this: It’s a pig. If you’ve ever ordered a double bacon cheeseburger, you’re just as evil as I am. More evil if you ordered the triple bacon cheeseburger.

106By the way, this whole thing I’m doing here is a literary technique called “concealing information from the reader.” That’s when the character knows something important, but chooses to leave the audience in the dark. This is the direct opposite of dramatic irony, which is when the audience knows something important that the character does not. That happened earlier when you knew that Mr. A. was a wizard and I thought he was just my quirky tutor (I guess we’re even now). Both techniques are detested by readers everywhere, but writers do it anyway because we are, by and large, sadistic, manipulative megalomaniacs. (Megalomaniacs: Kids, I use big words sometimes because I am secretly writing this book for your parents. Also, you need to learn these words if you want to be smart. When you see a word you don’t know, just open a dictionary and look it up. Or, if you don’t know what a dictionary is, just ask your phone. You might learn something!)

107I know. They keep getting bigger.

108Which were the size of my head, by the way. Seriously, you could drop a can of Sprite in there and never see it again. Safety tip: If you’re ever in a battle with a minotaur, and you’re lucky enough to be near a vending machine, just lob soda cans up his nose. Make sure you shake them first. Kaboom! (Fresca works best.)

109Minty fresh, as always. As my pappy used to say, “Lick a pine tree every day to keep the icky whiffs away.”

110Not a word, but definitely exists.

111Well, she said something like that.

112You may think this is an overly dramatic verb, but it’s not. Teenage boys are, by and large, terrified of emotion, especially in social situations, and even more especially from pretty, thousand-year-old women with ninja skills.

113Also called the zygomatic arch. In case you want to be a know-it-all later today.

114And they say men can’t multitask.

115Aka “Teddy” Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, and the youngest man ever to hold that office. He is one of the manliest men in the history of the world, so if you’re a boy, you should probably read books about Teddy Roosevelt and learn as much as you can. He is famous for too many things to list, but I will mention that while hunting in Mississippi in 1902, he refused to kill a wounded bear for sport. Political cartoonists drew a series of ridiculous sketches of him with a large fuzzy bear, and some toymakers in New York and Germany saw the pictures and started producing stuffed bears. They called them “Teddy” bears.

116I suppose she was afraid of being ambushed in the dark by a band of angry minotaurs. Typical girl.

117I tried not to be weirded out by how old she was. I mean, she didn’t look much older than me, and she was pretty cute. Okay, really cute, and she was smart, too, and she had dark hair and ninja skills, and she was nine hundred years older than me. Okay, let’s never talk about that again.

118It is not uncommon, by the way, for a dragon to stand idly by when his host (the guy with the shoes) freezes to death in a storm or is slain by an angry wizard. The dragon will stay in the boots until they are no longer warm, then leave without so much as a backward glance.

119I was going to tell you about that when it happened, but it just slowed down the story. We did it on our way back from the fortress.

120It was one of those neon-pink ones that actually says “DIARY” on the front cover.

121Obviously I’ve been spelling Zee incorrectly for your benefit. From now on, it will be spelled Zie, and you will know how to pronounce it, since you understand that it’s short for McKenzie.

122In case you lost track, this day was unlucky.

123I can be just as modest as the next guy, so long as there is a tactical advantage. In this instance, I was attempting to manipulate her by stroking her pride and forcing her to try and look good in front of her subjects.

124You can make any word sound Frenchy and feminine by simply tacking on “ette” to the end. Observe: baguette, novelette, towelette, toilette, roulette, croquette. My favorite is epaulette, which refers to the little bands of fabric on the shoulder panels of a military uniform, usually put there to display some type of rank or insignia. It’s pretty tough to make a soldier’s shoulders124a sound girly, but the French did it. And now you have this power, too. Behold: Your friend wears girly shoes. What do you call him? Shoesette. It’s great for snappy insults like that, but use it sparingly. And never, ever on a marine.

124aThis is a particularly fun example of an irresponsible assonant alliteration, which is a snobby way of saying annoying tongue twister. It happened completely by accident, and I left it in there just to mess124b with you. I hope you tried to say it out loud.

124bBecause I’m inherently mean spirited.124c

124cTake these footnotes for example: It occurred to me in the shower that it would be hilarious124d to make a group of footnote-footnotes, gradually decreasing in relevance.

124dMostly because I hope that somewhere, some reader with too much time on their hands actually follows all of these footnotes through to the end, hoping to discover something meaningful...124e

124eSimon Fayter’s Top 10 Chuck Norris Jokes:

Chuck Norris makes fire by rubbing two ice cubes together.

Chuck Norris can finish an entire bottle of milk in five seconds. Using a fork.

Chuck Norris can hear sign language.

Chuck Norris can speak braille.

Chuck Norris can do a wheelie on a unicycle.

When Chuck Norris was born he drove his mom home from the hospital.

Chuck Norris can dial your phone number on the microwave.

Chuck Norris can unscramble an egg.

It takes Chuck Norris fifteen seconds to cook Minute Rice.

Chuck Norris can delete the Recycling Bin.

125Yes, bumfuzzled is a word! It means confused or flustered. You’re welcome.

126If I had been more aware of what wizards could do, or had known enough to figure out that Zie was a Muse, I would have been way more careful. But I didn’t.

127“whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” I share this quote with you because in this chapter (and the next one), I make some pretty stupid mistakes. It’s easy for you, reading in your comfortable chair, seeing the big picture, to spot the things I did wrong and what I should have done instead. But it’s a lot harder for me, since I’m actually “in the arena” so to speak. So back off.

128This is a polite way to say that you’re about to throw up. Use it in social settings to avoid unseemly words like vomit, hurl, retch, ralph, barf, heave, puke, regurgitate, and disgorge, unless you like making people feel uncomfortable, in which case you should spew forth as many as possible. Anyway, sorry for bringing it up.

129See? You cannot get that smell out.

130In a random twist, it wore a gold necklace that said “Brittany.” No idea why. The strangest things can come out of a Muse’s pen when they are under pressure.

131Hey, all those little knobs are right next to each other in there. What do you think I am, a machine? To tell you the truth, I was impressed that it had taken me so long to turn the wrong one.

132A.k.a. the dangly pink thing in the back of your throat. Two things you probably don’t know about the uvula: 1. In the 1800s, doctors thought it caused chronic coughing and used to snip it off. 2. It initiates the gag reflex, which means it’s a good place to poke yourself if you’ve just swallowed poison, and a bad place to get a piercing (or get slapped by a salmon).

133I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m pretty sure it made me look awesome.

134This would have been an excellent time for Leto to pop out of my boot and lay down some dragon fire, but as usual he couldn’t be bothered. It is impossible to predict what a dragon will care about. In fact, I think you’ll find that it’s not nearly as cool to have a dragon infestation as you might think.

135This wasn’t very honorable, but I didn’t have much honor back then, and when backed into a corner, I can become quite cruel. Just so you know, I’ve matured a lot since those days.

136Technically, llamas don’t have armpits. Or arms.

137Get it? Count to nine? Lost a digit? Oh, never mind.

138She probably could have ended the whole fight right then if she had just kept her cool and used a bit of magic, but you know how silly people can be when their life is threatened. Fight or flight and all that.

139“Baaaaaaa.”

140Okay, fine, I just watched.

141Whether this is a real word or not is debatable. English experts will tell you that “sneaked” is the proper form, but we Americans have been ignoring English experts for over two hundred years now.

142I was fighting, too, of course, but nothing like them. Back then, I had a “duck and cover” style of fighting that basically consisted of poking a bit with my dagger and then running back to hide behind a girl.

143The power of stored-up magical wealth is immense. Of course, I squandered three whole days’ worth of good deeds to heal that one cut, but it was worth it. Anyway, I didn’t really know what I was doing.

144A former British Prime Minister.

145A species of miniature electric seahorses native to Galkalkgul (the minotaur home world). Drangus Bright (Drake’s papa) discovered that when properly processed and burned, gernoblepod excreta produces energy on par to nuclear fusion. Today Galkalkgul has 842 gernoblepod reactors, which are responsible for 91% of the planet’s energy. On a related note, don’t ever point out to a minotaur that their whole civilization is basically powered by poop. Minotaurs have no sense of humor. In fact, they’ll probably just kill you and feed your toes to the gernoblepods. That’s how Drake lost his cousin Larry.

146Alternate ending: I misjudge the sword’s rotation and it skewers me right through the face. Boom! The end.

147An English explorer, poet, and spy.

148Those are what Ioden would call “the good old days.”

149See? I’m a good person at heart. I want you to remember stuff like this when it happens, because sometimes I come off as a less than savory character.

150Not bad for my first day.

151This idea is a recurring theme of this series. Having said that, watch out for footnote 155. It’s quite long. No, I will not apologize. Sometimes a writer just has to rant. It will make more sense when we get to book five. Yes, five.

152The most handsome and important wizard in the history of the universe.

153She’d done a decent job of keeping a low profile last night, and Hawk had been pretty busy with his face.

154Keen insight or shrewdness.

155Worlds turn upon the backs of unseen angels. You rarely hear about them, but they live next door. I have a cousin back on Earth who is a nurse; while her children sleep, she helps pregnant mothers deliver babies. Every day she witnesses the full spectrum of human feeling—from death to life and tragedy to wonder. Her hands are in it, literally, the life blood of the planet, making the world turn with small pushes and pulls and words and miracles that no one remembers the next day, except for her.

She remembers.

She works all night, and the next, and the next, and stops at the store on her way home from work at 6 a.m. to buy a sandwich and cry into a pillow borrowed from the bedding department because she cannot forget—because the things that live inside her defy the capacity of human speech, and only tears will do. Sometimes she laughs with those she serves, when all is warm and comfortable. And when the night has grown cold, she cries with them. And in the critical moments when they are weakened and in need of fire, she stokes her own and screams until they are themselves alight and animating power formerly elusive. Then she drives home and sleeps and washes dishes and buys groceries and makes pancakes and fixes the toilet and repaints the wall and washes clothes and washes dishes again and reads to her children and builds them a playhouse and does laundry for the second time that day after her five-year-old messes his pants again and lays out her scrubs for another night’s work under bright lights and the unrelenting gaze of critics while miles away, her children sleep beneath the stars she cannot see. And all the while she wonders if she is a good person. Worlds turn upon the backs of unseen angels.

156I know, I’m fixating on the swords. But let’s face it, swords are cool.

157If (heaven forbid) a teacher ever uses this book in a classroom setting of some sort (I hope that doesn’t happen to you), and you are (teachers can be so silly sometimes) tasked with identifying the major theme of my story, this is it. Hence the false-prideful, power-hungry protagonist with no real magical power of his own, the incessant chapter quotes and footnotes about human greatness, and the way my codex gives me power based on my moral character. You’re welcome.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to…

…My beta readers: Bryonna, Spencer, Spencer, and Isaac.

…To God.

…And to my launch team, upon whom I depend:

Patti Anderson

April Angel

Sonia Arroyos

Terri Arturi

Candice Aucamp

Katie Babbit

Angel Barraza

Lydia Barron

Karen Bennett

Melanie Bessas

Jeanine Bevacqua

John Bigelow

Bry Boler

Melissa Bonaparte

Rachel Bonnichsen

Randall Booth

Alisha Bowen

Riche Boyce

Shelley Brade

John Chasteen

Suzanne Christensen

Rachel Church

Amanda Comrie

Emma Curtis

Brandy Dalton

Janice David

Bryan Deal

Brandy Emmert

Charlie Evans

Roger Fauble

Jennifer Firestone

Sarah Flint

Shannon Forslund

Danielle Foster

Jamie Francke

Sierra Furrow

Jennifer Fury

Bradley Gartin

Kisara Gibbons

Carmen Gomez

Daniel Grala

Mike Grant

Charlene Greene

Phil Gulbrandsen

Elva Guzman

Linda Hansen

Ondreya Harper

Bruce Hastie

Sarah Heinisch

Zoe Henricksen

Christine Holmes

Shirley Holten

Claudia Howard

Jody Huffman

Geeta Indar-De Bourg

Sara Ingles

Krista Jasper

Bonnie Keck

Richard Kellerman

Manie Kilian

Barb Kubiak

Jennifer Lapachian

Tiffany Lawrence

Kenneth Loiacano

Melissa Long

Georganne Lynch

Khyla Malone

JoLynn Marcusen

Arisleny Martinez

Kimberly Matthiensen

John Maxim

Marilee McQuarrie

Julie McWilliams

Veronica Meidus-Heilpern

Joyce Michelmore

Candace Miller

Michael Minkove

Becky Modderman

Mary Moffatt

James Morrow

Cathy Mulcahey

Sarah Nicholes

Shirlee Nicol

Anna-Lena Nielsen

Debbie Nix

Krysten Noel

Anna Olsen

Daria Peterson

Eva Pontious

Isaac Reyes

Isaac Reynolds

Nicky Robinson

Angela Ross

Kari Schick

Britton Schwartz

Shelly Sessions

Crystal Shapiro

Michelle Shelton

Eileen Smith

Leena Smith

Lauren Smith

Matthew Thornton

David Thorp

Aiden Tombuelt

Cheryl Torricer

Chelsea Tracy

Lana Turner

Corinne Vizer

Chelle Wakeley

Alex Weise

Maria Wetherbee

Deidre Williams

Kelly Williams

Liz Wilson

Ron

Rebekah

Jeanine

Shari

Anna

Tanya

Robin

Karen

About the Author

Austin lives in Hawaii with seventeen cats and an albino baboon. When he's not fictionalizing wizarding autobiographies or eluding the magical police, he works as a professional reindeer impersonator. He has received numerous awards and worked for several high profile clients including one with a very shiny nose who nonetheless wishes to remain anonymous. Austin enjoys long walks on the beach, reading fan mail, and collecting tumbleweeds.

Books By the Author

Magemother

The Mage and the Magpie

The Empty Throne

The Paradise Twin

The Bridge to Nowhere

Simon Fayter

Simon Fayter and the Doors of Bone

Simon Fayter and the Tomb of Rone

Simon Fayter and the Titan's Groan

Simon Fayter and the Eyes of Stone (Coming 2019)

Simon Fayter and the King Alone (Coming 2019)

Find all of the author's books HERE

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