Jason’s cheeks flushed. He looked at the sword at his side, then at Bristol’s sword, but he seemed rooted in place, unable to decide what to do.
“And your answer?” Drexel prompted.
Jason slid his sword back to its scabbard. “I guess I have no choice.”
“Ah! Very good! You have learned the art of political maneuvering.” Drexel pulled Jason into the anteroom and closed the bedroom door. “You have two hours to flee before I alert the new counselor of your deed. The dungeon guard is one of us, and he will allow you to enter. When you find her on the lower level, you will learn what you must do.”
“Her?”
Drexel pushed him toward the hall. “Just go!”
Clutching the keys and the finger, Jason hustled toward the rear of the castle, darkness enveloping him, leaving Drexel and Bristol alone in the anteroom.
“Come quickly,” Drexel said.
The two hurried into the bedroom. Drexel withdrew the handkerchief from his pocket and rushed to the bed. A dagger protruded from Prescott’s chest. Blood covered his nightclothes and dripped to the sheets. His wife, Lady Moulraine, snored at his side, her mouth wide open.
Using the handkerchief, Drexel slid the dagger out of Prescott’s chest and wrapped it up. “Get rid of it in the way we discussed,” he said as he handed it to Bristol. “Then summon Orion. I will wait for him here.”
After Bristol left and closed the door, Drexel looked at Lady Moulraine. The potion he had put in her cup would keep her asleep even if a quake shook the palace.
He pulled a small leather book from an inner pocket and opened it to the first page. In neat block letters, it read, The Journal of Uriel Blackstone.
The extane channels in the walls had been turned down to their nighttime setting, but they provided enough light for reading. He thumbed through the pages, probably for the thousandth time. Although he had very nearly memorized it, maybe another perusal would raise a subtle point that might help him massage his plan. Every detail had to be perfect, or else he might be swinging from the gallows instead of Jason.
Soon, he was again experiencing Uriel Blackstone’s tragic story. He had written his letters boldly and neatly on the opening pages, announcing his intentions to tell the entire tale and tuck the journal away for his son, Tibalt. The governmental authorities were chasing him, calling him a disturber of civil society, so he would have to finish the journal as quickly as possible.
Indeed, on the following pages, his penmanship suffered. With hastily scrawled characters, his story began.
More than one hundred years ago, a most foul dragon by the name of Magnar transported to Major Four from another world. The dragons called their planet Starlight, but that is a lie. Nothing exists there but the darkest of deeds. It is better to call it Dracon, for dragons rule there with cruelty. Oddly enough, they label our world Darksphere, a malicious twist in reality.
While on Major Four, Magnar captured me in the prime of life along with four other males and five females of similar age, none of us related by blood or by marriage. Bound by chains, the dragon took us to a transportation portal deep underground where a river flowed that had apparently cut the tunnel through the centuries.
We waited on a dry floor, facing a bare wall while Magnar inspected its surface. I stood with my shoulders square and my head straight, though my companions whined and wept as they hunched in fear. They clutched burning torches, but I declined to carry one, choosing instead to bear a new copy of the Code, the greatest light of all. Who could tell when we might return? Surely we would need the holy instructions within its pages.
When Magnar announced that the transport would commence, I stepped toward him and said, “No matter how distant your world, I swear to you that I will escape and return here. We have courageous men, and we will mount an army you cannot withstand. We will not rest until every soul you have stolen returns to its homeland.”
Magnar laughed and replied with a deep throaty voice. “Uriel, you are a fool. No one in Darksphere knows of the portal, and I will be back to take more of your kind, for we need many to dig deep in search of pheterone.”
“You are the fool!” I shouted. “When I return, I will lock this portal so that no one can pass through from either side, and I will not unlock it until our army is ready to invade and destroy you slavers.” The moment I uttered those words, I regretted them. What a fool I was to reveal my plans. Such was the state of my passion.
“You overestimate your comrades,” Magnar said. “I have half a mind to release you to prove your error. You are one of the few who care for more than his own bread and porridge. Your fellows would not believe you, and even if one could be persuaded, he would be frightened, unwilling to risk being thought of as insane. Even if you escape, no one will join your army. No one.”
I stared at him for a moment, trying to invent a courageous response that would not further reveal my purpose, but I had not the chance. With a wave of his wing, Magnar interrupted my thoughts. “Enough of this prattle. Move to the wall.”
We shuffled toward the wall, our chains making a racket with every sliding step. Using his foreleg, Magnar touched a peculiar dark oval embedded in the stone. It appeared to be black glass. A light glowed behind his claw, yellow at first, then red, and finally blue. Like a heartbeat, it pulsed. It began rather dim, but its energy increased until it spread out and bathed our chamber in radiance. The blue light swept away everything in sight, the wall, the river, and even ourselves. For a few moments, I could see nothing, only the bright blue light. Then, the light faded. The wall holding the glass disappeared, and new light illuminated the chamber from a source beyond where the wall had stood. It seemed as if the wall simply vanished, opening a way into a second room.
I glanced around at my companions. The cowards had crouched and covered their faces with their hands. I, however, stood tall. I couldn’t let this dragon cow me into submission.
“You are now on Starlight,” Magnar said, “and here you will stay. If you work for us, we will treat you well. In order to provide us with more labor, you will populate our world as quickly as possible. If you fail to obey, we will kill you and return to your world to capture others to replace you.”
He stared at me, his fiery eyes red and throbbing, but I stood my ground.
“This one is strong,” Magnar said, his voice now quieter. “We will break him soon enough.”
I wondered to whom he was speaking, for no other dragons seemed to be present. I thought perhaps that he might be possessed by an evil spirit.
The dragon looked down at the floor, so I looked as well. A row of crystalline pegs made a line from one side wall to the other. He plucked the middle peg with his clawed hand. A moment or two later, as if by magic, the river vanished, replaced by what appeared to be a continuation of the room in which we stood.
With a wave of a wing, he turned and pointed at an upward sloping tunnel, the source of light I mentioned earlier. “Come. You will no longer need your torches.”
As we marched toward the exit, I moved to the end of the line and glared at Magnar. I wanted him to know that I was not a beaten man. Somehow, I would escape and return with a legion of soldiers to rescue our people and destroy the dragons.
We marched under a dreadful hot sun. It looked like our own Solarus, reddish orange with an occasional flare, though perhaps bigger. After we hewed some trees with a primitive saw, giving us our first taste of slave labor, Magnar took us to a stream that ran near a cave. He forced us to undress and wash in the water. Two of the women were especially hesitant, their natural modesty protesting such exposure while men were around, but a shot of fire from Magnar’s nostrils encouraged them to obey. I turned my back, but one of my fellows leered at them. I scolded him, of course, reminding him of the Code’s conduct for gentlemen, but he paid me no mind.
Later, my own resolve was sorely tested. Magnar herded us into the cave, divided us into pairs, male with female, and guided each couple to separate, private area
s, dim and cool. He ordered us to do what was necessary to reproduce, warning us that failure to comply would result in our deaths, and then left us alone.
The poor young lady in my company, Laurel by name, was one of the more modest lasses. She laid herself on the stone floor, curled into a fetal ball, and wept—for a return to her mother, for preservation of her virginity, for rescue from this darkest of nightmares.
What was a gentleman to do? Look away from her uncovered body? Comfort the frightened young woman, who appeared to be no more than eighteen years of age? Protect her from death by encouraging her to obey the dragon, in spite of our great misgivings? The last option seemed the vilest. I had a wife at home, a most lovely and loyal woman, whom I left pregnant with our own first child, a son, my wife had predicted, citing how her belly distended in a certain way. And though she would likely forgive me for forced adultery, I would rather have died in the dragon’s river of fire than betray our vows of fidelity. Yet, Laurel would suffer death as well. Would I be a villain to force my view of the Code on her so that she, too, would burn in the very same river?
Speaking tenderly to her, I suggested a pact. We would lie to the dragon, which we both agreed would be a holier option than the alternative, and pretend to have completed the act he had demanded, hoping the dragon knew too little about human physiology to seek evidence. Then, we would try to escape that very night.
As we waited for the dragon to return, we prayed together, asking the Creator for rescue, both for ourselves and for the eight others who faced the same choices that had beset us. Later, we were allowed to dress, and Magnar announced our labors, a drilling project through the planet’s crust in search of a gas he called pheterone.
Drexel flipped past several pages and stopped near the end. So far, nothing had drawn his attention. Maybe Uriel’s final entry would spark something new.
Yes, those days passed at a tediously slow pace, inventing and manufacturing tools based on our recollections, and drilling, chiseling, and digging in dark tunnels under a mesa in the midst of a sun-baked plateau. Because of my success in stealing the crystalline peg Magnar had used to open the portal, he was never able to venture back to our world to capture more humans, so he grew more agitated about Laurel’s apparent inability to conceive. With the other four women already pregnant, Magnar’s patience with us was growing thin. And since he suspected that I had taken the peg, though he could not prove it, I endured frequent chastisement by means of his whip.
Now that he had learned more about how we procreated, Laurel and I had to devise creative ways to fool him, and each private encounter and each secretive plot drew us closer to each other. We became friends, though still not lovers, but guilt blossomed in my heart along with my affection for her. It felt so wrong to be the friend of another female while my dear wife likely longed for my presence.
In spite of our apparent infertility, Magnar kept Laurel and me together, even forcing us to sleep shackled to one another in the night cave, warning us that he would give her to a more virile man should she not soon conceive.
The one man of low character, who earlier stared at the vulnerable women while they washed, often cast his lustful eyes at Laurel. Allowing this beast to have her in his clutches was a thought I could not bear. We would escape. Somehow I would get past the dragon guard and open the portal.
Then the blessed night came. I finally managed to purloin a file we had fabricated to sharpen chisels. Laurel and I pried open our sleep shackles and sneaked out to the portal cave. Because my previous escape attempt had come many days prior, the dragon guarding that cave had become less than vigilant and eventually fell asleep.
We stole into the portal cave, and I inserted the crystalline peg into the empty hole. When the underground river appeared, we walked together through the portal and into our world. Of course, I took the crystal with me. When I removed it, the portal stayed open for a short time, but it eventually closed, once again sealing Magnar in his own world.
Our escape raised another dilemma. Should we risk going back for our enslaved brothers and sisters? Or should we rather muster an army and return with the weaponry needed to enforce our wishes?
After deciding on the latter plan, we hurried to our homes. Oh, but tragedy upon tragedies! We both learned of great loss. My wife had died giving birth to you, Tibalt, and Laurel’s mother, a widow, had died of heartache. Laurel now had no one else in her home.
Grief-stricken and enraged at the dragons for taking me away from my beloved, I told my story to the authorities, but when I was unable to decipher the black ovular glass in the underground wall and open the portal, they thought me mad and threatened to lock me up in the lunacy ward. I urged Laurel to keep her journey to Dracon a secret, so that she would not suffer the same humiliation.
During the passing days while I studied the dark glass, which seemed to be the key to opening the portal from the human world, I slowly recovered from the pain of my loss. Laurel and I secretly wed in the presence of a kindly minister and two trusted witnesses, and we decided to stay in separate abodes to ensure her safety. She lived in a remote area, while you, Tibalt, and I kept a residence in the village, so the fact that Laurel became with child was never discovered by anyone save for the midwife who kept quiet about the new little girl in the rural cabin.
After a few years, I finally learned the secrets behind the glass. Because of its strange properties, I dubbed it an Eye to the Sky, an intelligent window to other worlds. It can be programmed to respond to certain influences, so I proceeded to teach it to respond only to me and my genetic progeny.
Once I was able to control it fully, I renewed my efforts to publicize the existence of slaves on Dracon, but now no one would follow me to the underground river. When it became clear that further efforts to raise an army would cost me my freedom, I returned to Dracon on my own and hid the crystal in a safe place, but there is no need to tell you about that, dear Tibalt, for I trust that the humans there will soon follow the instructions I left for them so that they can find the crystal themselves and escape. I also left the Code at one woman’s bedside, a green-eyed redheaded lady who seemed to be of higher character than some of the others. I hope she has preserved it well.
When I returned to our world, I devised and constructed the intricate obstacles to locating and opening the portal, which I will fully describe on the last pages and also show to you before I again attempt to raise an army. With my instructions fully revealed to you, I can have confidence that, even if imprisoned, my passion to rescue the captives will carry on to the next generation.
And now, my son, I bid you good-bye, hoping, of course, to see you again, but, considering what happened the previous time I reported my story, I fear that our reunion might not come to pass.
Drexel turned to the last page and studied the portal notes. An amazingly intricate set of obstacles lay in front of any seeker of the portal—a field of flowers with a sleep-inducing aroma, a pit that dropped the unwary into an underground river, and wandering ghosts who guarded the entry. And yet, Uriel had also provided measures to avoid each one, including a recipe for an elixir that counteracted the flowers, an alternative entry to the portal that avoided the pit, and poems that would appease the ghosts. Only the possessor of the journal would be able to survive the ordeal. Obviously, Uriel was much more than a confident gentleman of unyielding principles. He was a genius.
Unfortunately for the poor man, the seneschal of the time accused him of murdering the missing people and concocting the story about the dragon planet. The authorities threw him into the dungeon, and when his rantings grew too loud and absurd, they committed him to the insane asylum. He stayed there for decades, making friends with the younger men, even dubbing some of them Tibalt, after his own son. He died at the age of seventy-seven, alone and forgotten.
After closing the journal, Drexel rubbed its leather cover. It never reached Tibalt’s hands. No, Laurel found it among her late husband’s effects and hid it well, but not well en
ough to keep it from those with passion to learn the truth about the Lost Ones. Nor was she able to hide her own progeny. Laurel’s little girl grew up to birth another girl, who later became the mother of Marcelle, making Marcelle Uriel’s great-granddaughter.
This meant, of course, that Marcelle carried Uriel’s genetics, which made her capable of communicating with the Eye to the Sky and perhaps opening the portal. Yet, the obstacles described in Uriel’s journal presented other great dangers she might not be able to overcome. Commissioning Adrian to locate the portal the dragon used to leave behind Frederick’s hat and courier tube seemed to be a better way to benefit from Marcelle’s talents.
The door opened again. Drexel pushed the journal back into his pocket and stood up. “Counselor Orion?” he whispered.
A tall, lean figure strode toward him, still dressed in his invocation vestments, dark and silky. “Lady Moulraine is here?”
“She will not awaken. A strong potion has seen to that.”
Skepticism wrinkled his brow, but it soon eased. “Let us proceed.”
Drexel altered his voice to a formal tone. “I have long admired your quest to rid the land of sorceresses. In my opinion, the pyre is used far too infrequently. There are many witches among us whom the flames should taste. So I was gladdened when I learned of your ascendance to the position of counselor.”
“Do not be tiresome, Drexel. Come to the point.”
“Gladly.” Drexel cleared his throat before continuing. “The Diviner you seek. At what age would you have been allowed to take her from her parents?”
“Sixteen years. If a girl is really a witch, she cannot hide it when she reaches that age.”
“And Elyssa was …” Drexel paused, waiting for Orion.