Without another word, the professor, Walter, and Karen popped open the doors and exited the Jeep. Karen led the way toward the arch of stones, crunching through the deep snowdrifts. Walter held the box containing Excalibur under one arm and used the other to steady his teacher as he hobbled on crutches along the slippery trail.
As they neared the entrance, Walter tugged on the professor’s coat. “Hey, Prof. Do you feel something?”
They halted at a clearing, snow falling all around. The ground swayed, then rocked. Walter widened his stance and bent his knees, keeping a firm grip on the professor’s arm.
The professor spoke in a hushed tone. “It’s a tremor, Walter. A slight one, to be sure, but it may be a harbinger of events to come.”
“A tremor?” Karen asked. “You mean, like an earthquake?”
“Yes. It seems that our local Judgment Day may already be dawning.”
Chapter 17
Billy approached the candlestone, tingling weakness spreading through his arms and legs. Even with stabbing pain shooting through his back and sickening gases churning his stomach, he allowed himself to be drawn to the gem’s unearthly pull.
A thin swirl of barely visible light streamed into a dense grouping of the stone’s minute facets. It looked like a tiny vacuum cleaner sucking in a trail of dancing pixies from all around the room. On the other side of the gem, a steady, dim beam poured out, like someone inside the stone had strangled the pixies, flattened their corpses with a mallet, and squeezed their bodies into a shaft of dead light.
The nausea worsened, and a throbbing headache pounded his brain. Even with dozens of odd gadgets surrounding him in the cold shadows, he could focus on only one thought. Bonnie was in that stone, and his passion to set her free helped him brave the pain. As sick as he felt while standing on the outside, there was no telling how much it would hurt to actually be inside that rock. Billy held his hand over his stomach and sighed.
I guess I might as well get used to it.
“Billy!” Ashley’s voice called out of the darkness on the other side of the room. A shaft of light from an open door provided a backdrop for her beckoning silhouette. “You need a robe! Come over here!”
Billy hurried toward Ashley. She stood at the cave’s back wall near the doorway where she had exited earlier. As he approached, her dark form took shape, sharpening with each step. With the hood of her robe raised, and her face still in the shadows, she looked like a cowled monk. She held out another robe in her left hand, folded once and draped over her palm.
“Take this and pull it over your clothes. It should protect you from the candlestone’s effects.” She unfolded the robe and held it by its shoulders. “And you’ll have to swap your belt. The robe has its own sash, but I wrapped an extra cotton belt in it for your jeans. You’ll lose your metal buckle during the process, and we don’t want your pants falling off when you come back.”
Billy replaced his belt and pulled the robe over his head, pushing his arms through the sleeves. The shoulders were comfortable, but with the hemline dropping to just above his knees, it wasn’t a perfect fit.
Ashley smoothed out the wrinkles. “It’ll have to do.” She grabbed a cuff on one of Billy’s sleeves and straightened it around his arm, then took his hand and held it closer to her face. “This ring looks a lot like Bonnie’s, except bigger and older.”
“Yeah. We have matching rings, sort of a dragon friendship thing.”
She rubbed the gem’s surface with her thumb. “It’s for dragons? What kind of stone is it?”
“It’s called a rubellite; it’s a kind of tourmaline.”
“A rubellite? Where do you find those?”
Billy curled his fingers and slowly pulled his hand away. “My dad brought it to me.” He pointed toward the candlestone in the central lab area. “Shouldn’t we get going?”
Ashley took a step toward the domes, but a sudden jolt threw her back. She took a long step to keep from falling and spread out her hands, balancing with her knees bent. “Oh, no!”
Billy slapped his hand against the wall to brace himself. The lights swayed, and vibrations drilled into his feet. “What’s going on?”
Ashley grabbed Billy around the waist and pulled him toward the doorframe. She sank to her knees, dragging him down with her. “It felt like an earthquake,” she said as the two huddled under the frame. “It’s happened once before.”
Steady ripples ran through Billy’s back as he leaned against the frame’s side, and a gentle tapping of grit sounded from the drop ceiling. “Could this place collapse?”
Ashley didn’t answer for a moment while the tremor settled down. “It’s not out of the question,” she finally replied. After a few seconds of calm, she took Billy’s hand and stood up. “The tremor’s over, but there’s a chance another one will follow. We’ll have to hurry.”
With his hand still in Ashley’s, he led the way toward the candlestone. “C’mon, then! Let’s get transluminated!”
Bonnie cast a glance around a crystal wall, straining her sharpening eyes down one of the myriad dark halls. She hoped for a trace of light, a friendly shadow of luminescence. In this murky house, it seemed that light itself was a shadow, shades of mortal essence cast by wandering phantoms.
In the distance, a trail of light disappeared around the corner. She hurried down the dark corridor, hoping to find where the specter had gone, but there were dozens of corners, some leading to abrupt dead ends. A few halls were too dark to probe, and she passed them by. After an unsuccessful foray into a narrow cubbyhole, she spied the light again near the end of a wide hallway. It turned out of view, its sparkling trail vanishing in a corridor on the right.
“Wait! Please, wait!” Bonnie’s thought stream raced after the glimmer.
The glowing trail halted, and Bonnie dashed ahead, her light flashing like a strobe. “May I talk to you again?”
“Come no closer, child.”
Bonnie stopped just before reaching the turn, and the voice spoke again, this time joyfully, like a delighted grandfather. “What do you seek, my frightened little lamb?”
She waited a second, allowing her light pulses to slow down. “I seek advice. Devin wants to make a deal with me.”
“I see.” The voice was slow and deliberate, yet it still carried a hint of mirth. “Has that foul creature tried to twist your mind?”
Bonnie felt that her thoughts were being read again, but this time it didn’t bother her. “Well, I do feel sort of confused. Devin wants me to let my shield down so we can both attach to my friend, Billy, when he comes in here. He says that Billy will lose brain function, maybe even die, when he gets restored. Devin says he has a way to keep that from happening, and he’ll tell us how it works if we cooperate and all go together.”
The voice laughed gently. “And you believed him?”
“Well, yeah. Sort of. He played this recording of my father, and it sounded real.”
“It was real, but that is not the issue.”
The white glow that seeped from around the corner morphed into a fiery red mist, rolling across the dark crystalline floor like bloody fog. A current of darkness flowed through Bonnie’s mind, as though a breeze had channeled down the hall, carrying the voice like an echo riding the wind. “Devin petitions your fears. He bids them to come out and wrestle with your faith. The battle is already met in fields of darkness, where fears are born and faith is proven.”
Bonnie stepped back, feeling a strange uneasiness. “My fears? But if my father was telling the truth, aren’t my fears valid?”
The fog congealed, separating and forming tiny red mounds of luminescent goop, like pliable bubbles plucked from a lava light. With invisible legs, they moved toward Bonnie, each one emitting sparks, electrically charged robots marching in rows, spitting and sizzling as they came. Bonnie backed away again, first a step, and then another as they approached. Finally, she stopped and let them surround her, standing still as they closed in. With a loud buzz, they all popped and disappeared, their static charges dispersing into the darkness.
The voice returned. “You stepped back, child. Were your fears valid?”
“I . . . I was surprised. I didn’t know what those things were.”
“But then you stood your ground. Why?”
“I’m not sure. I just . . .” Bonnie’s voice trailed off. Her troubled thoughts burst into confused sparks that caught the hall’s dark current and blew away. Her friend’s light glowed brighter, reverting to white and casting its effervescent shadow farther into her hallway. The winds of darkness died away, and Bonnie felt her own glow strengthening.
“What is the nature of faith, child?” the voice continued. “Why did you stand fast? Your answer will guide you through the battle.”
As he spoke, the entire hallway filled with light, and the laboratory appeared before her as if she were standing outside the candlestone. Ashley and Billy, each wearing a diver’s robe, huddled together as Ashley studied Billy’s rubellite ring. Bonnie couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she figured out what they were about to do.
Suddenly, darkness clouded the lab, and the scene dissolved into an expanding sea of blackness. Bonnie was again in the dark hallway, back in her gloomy prison, listening to the friendly voice.
“Learn the secret of seeing beyond the walls of your existence,” it said. “When we were on the outside, we saw everything as though we were looking through a glass darkly. We were restricted, earthly, blinded by the limitations of our eyes. Now, we are no longer flesh and bone, and we are able to see with spiritual eyes.”
Bonnie sensed that her friend was ready to leave, that he had given as much advice as he was willing to give. “Thank you for building that fence of light around me when I first came in here. If you hadn’t protected me, Devin would have grabbed me. Who knows what he might have done?”
The voice laughed merrily and began to fade away. “But, dear child, it was not I who protected you.”
The trail of light disappeared, and Bonnie knew he had spoken his last. His words were puzzling, yet enlightening, and he raised more questions than he answered.
What is faith? What did the marching red blobs mean? But one question brought hope, and the possibilities sparked a surge of brilliance in Bonnie’s light. Who built that radiant wall of protection? Maybe she was right after all, and God had been there, just as she had sung over and over.
She retreated down the corridor to try to find the candlestone’s entry point. Billy could show up at any time. The number of turns seemed endless, and darkness draped the passages, but she wound through the maze with a new kind of ability. Was she using the spiritual eyes her mysterious friend had mentioned?
As she approached an area that reminded her of the entry point, a new, unnerving sensation arose. The whole dark world pitched and yawed like a ghost ship on a midnight sea, her tiny cosmos shaking like someone was trying to split the candlestone with a jackhammer. Then, after several seconds, it stopped.
New fears crawled into her mind, like a horde of dark soldiers creeping onto a battlefield. It was time to sing. A Bible verse swirled up from Bonnie’s memory, and she made up a tune to go with it.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face-to-face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
“I put the flashlight here,” Karen said, pointing at a hook. “but I told Billy about it, so he must have taken it.”
The professor reached into his oversized inner coat pocket where he had packed Merlin’s Diary and withdrew a penlight. “Fear not,” he said confidently. He clicked a button on the end and cast a tiny beam into the steep, black entryway. “It’s my American Express flashlight. I never leave home without it.” The professor struggled to the edge of the stairwell and propped his crutches against the wall. “I’ll have to do without these.”
Walter held the sword’s box in both arms. “We can carry them . . . somehow.”
The professor pointed the beam at the walls on each side of the steps. “There’s no handrail, so I’ll need one of you to support me on the way down. Walter, can you carry the sword and the crutches? Excalibur is very heavy in the hands of one who is not meant to use it.”
“You’re telling me! And it’s getting heavier by the minute.” Walter tucked the box under one arm and picked up the crutches with his free hand. “But these are light. I can do it.”
“Very well. You and Karen can take turns if you should tire.”
The professor draped an arm over Karen’s shoulders, and Walter trailed them by a couple of steps. Their progress was slow, and the gray daylight shining through the open entrance faded like the setting of the sun. As darkness folded in, the professor’s flashlight brightened, its laser-like beam illuminating each stair.
“Hey, Prof,” Walter said, his whisper magnified in the cold stillness, “does this remind you of anything?”
“Not exactly, Walter. I am not accustomed to tromping down a dark, endless stairway with a bullet hole in my heel.”
“Not that. I mean, we’ve been out hunting for Billy before. Last time we had a crossbow. This time we have a sword. Don’t you get a feeling like déjà vu?”
“Indeed, the parallels are striking. I do expect, however, that there will be a drastic change. It is time for someone else’s light to grow while mine diminishes.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
The professor just sighed and said no more. Walter clutched the sword box to his chest and hung back an extra step. Prof had always kept a few secrets, revealing what he thought necessary at appropriate times. Walter knew better than to press his teacher for more information. The earlier tremor had shaken him, and thoughts of disasters and end-of-the-world catastrophes tapped at his brain like a deadly ghost tiptoeing just a few steps behind. Darkness had a way of creating those stealthy phantoms, and Walter peeked over his shoulder to make sure they were alone.
After negotiating at least a hundred stairs, Walter whispered, “Karen, let me know when you think we’re about two-thirds of the way.”
“Okay,” she whispered back. “Why?”
“From there on, we’ll have to keep our mouths shut. We might need the element of surprise.”
The professor kept his face forward while talking. “Walter is correct, Karen. Although Dr. Conner doesn’t seem to be either in front of us or behind us, you told us that there exists another entrance into the laboratory. Silence is advisable in case he is already there.”
“Yeah, it exists, all right. It’s a tunnel that comes out into the valley near Camp Misery. And it leads through a big cave near the lab.”
“A tunnel?” Walter repeated. “Why don’t you use that instead of this crazy stairway? Wouldn’t it be easier?”
Karen looped her arm around the professor’s waist and grunted, adding to the sound of boots clopping on creaking stair boards. She finally muttered, “You wouldn’t believe me.”
The professor stopped and pointed his beam at Karen’s chin. “Karen, you need not fear ridicule. We have seen enough oddities and peculiar phenomena to keep us from doubting almost anything.”