The Search for Truth (2 page)

“You're supposed to think of the place you want to go while you're in the Substance Channel,” June said. “Focus on it. And let me know you got there okay.”

“Sure,” Erec said. “After I find Bethany, I'll e-mail you on the MagicNet.”

“Okay. I can always check on you with my Seeing Eyeglasses.” June had a pair of glasses that let her see whoever she missed the most, anywhere they were. For a while the glasses had been stuck on their alarm clock. June had to send the clock to a Vulcan store to get them removed.

Erec put his arms through the ring, then he slid his head through.
Instead of coming out the other side into the room, he was surrounded by darkness. Before he knew it, he was sucked into space.

 

It was a strange feeling, floating on nothing in the blackness. He was hanging in stillness. And he didn't seem to be going anywhere. How much longer before he would arrive?

Then Erec realized he had not given the Substance Channel any directions.
Alypium
. He focused his mind on it. He had to get to Alypium, fast.

Suddenly he felt himself whizzing through space. It was as if a tunnel were being carved around him as he went. Relief surged through him. Good. He would get there soon and find Bethany. But where in Alypium was she? And how would he find her?

Then a thought occurred to him. Maybe the Substance channel would take him straight to Bethany if he concentrated on her instead of a specific place.

He thought about Bethany, saying her name in his head.
Take me to Bethany Cleary.
He thought about her tanned face, her dark, wavy hair. Then his head filled with the image he had seen of her in the future. Frozen against a wall. Ropes around her. Scared, helpless. About to die.

Please,
he begged the Substance,
get me there fast.

The memory of his cloudy thought haunted him. The man he hated more than anyone in the world was going to hurt Bethany. The one who had killed his dragon friend, Aoquesth. Erec pictured Baskania, seven eyes across his forehead, standing before Bethany, ready to torture and kill her because he thought she had the secret of the Final Magic.

Erec felt a jerk, as if he suddenly had shifted direction. He was yanked sideways, then thrown into the light on a hard floor. When he looked up, the ring hanging in the air above him vanished.

He dusted himself off, relieved. He was indoors. But this place did not look like the Castle Alypium. It wasn't a shop, either. The room he was in was large. The air was thick and hard to breathe, but then again he always felt this way when he first arrived in the Kingdoms of the Keepers. He had to get used to it.

A group of people stood nearby. They were all looking at him.

But only one of them stepped forward and smiled—the one with seven eyes across his forehead.

T
HICK CURTAINS HUNG
around the stately atrium that was scattered with plush furniture. An ornate reception desk sat at the back of the room. People walking by stopped and stared at Erec, then noticed Baskania and rushed away.

“Well,” Baskania said to Erec, “what a nice little present.” He laughed. “Two little presents, actually.” He tapped the empty space on his face where his own eye once had been. “Looks like I'll get to
fill this gap with your dragon eye sooner than I expected. And now I'll have your other one to match it too.”

Baskania pointed a finger at Erec. “Say good-bye to the world, boy. There's no dragon to save you now.”

Erec squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for a shock of pain, blackness, or something that told him his life was over.

He cursed himself. Why did he mess up in the Substance Channel like that? His mother had told him to concentrate. All he had to do was think about Bethany or a place in Alypium. And instead he had let his mind wander to Baskania, of all people, which brought him here.

He could not believe how badly he had messed up. Soon Bethany would tell Oscar her secret. And somehow, just three minutes later, Baskania would know, and Bethany would die.

There was another problem too. Even bigger, if that was possible. Erec had been the only one competing with the nasty Stain triplets to become a new ruler of the Kingdoms of the Keepers. Three kids were to be crowned soon. For some reason Erec had been the only one chosen by King Piter's scepter during the ceremony. That didn't seem to matter to Baskania, though, nor to the Stain triplets who were competing with Erec for the throne. If Erec died now, they would take over, Baskania would become the emperor, and his madness and power would drive him to destroy the world.

And it was all Erec's fault.

Surprised that he was still alive, Erec cracked his eyes open. Baskania frowned at his finger. “No,” Baskania murmured. “The dragon eyes. How careless of me.” He saw Erec staring with shock and confusion, and smiled. “I must be careful with your eyes so there will be no mistakes. I had two dragon babies before, but by the time I took their eyes out they were worthless. They had been dead too long. No, I'm not going to kill you yet. We'll have the surgeon take
your eyes out first, correctly, and then I will have the pleasure.”

Baskania closed his eyes in thought, then a glowing silver man appeared at his side wearing a silver laboratory jacket. A stethoscope hung from his neck. It was hard to see him in detail. When Erec looked straight at him, he became blurry. An intense radiance glimmered around him.

Erec recognized him as a silver ghost, like the first bus driver that had taken him to Alypium.
So this would be who would cut his eyes out right before he died
, he thought.

He tried to remember anything he could about silver ghosts. They were vain, didn't like people, and would do almost anything for payment. But there was one other thing Erec remembered about silver ghosts that flooded him with hope.

They could not touch him.

 

June had told him that he was charmed, and he knew from experience that ghosts could not hurt him. But that didn't stop his heart from racing when Baskania zapped him and the ghost into a room with a dentist's chair. Erec shuddered thinking about what might happen next. If the ghost took a swing at him, he would probably be safe. But if the ghost touched him with something else, like a surgical tool, would he still be protected?

The ghost slid around the room gathering small drills and saws, and filled a jar with a clear liquid. Suddenly, Erec found himself floating through the air toward the dentist chair, which rose up and lay flat. Thick chains pinned his body to the chair.

Erec jerked back and forth to break free. He had to get out of here. He looked around the room. There was one door and one window. He could see a treetop through the window, so they were probably up high.

“Where are we?” he asked the ghost.

“In one of the surgical suites in the Green House.” The silver ghost sounded bored. “Won't be here for more than a few minutes, though. Of course, you won't actually see where you are going after that, so it won't matter, will it?”

Erec's heart pounded, thumping in his chest. Was this really happening? His eyes were going to be taken out and handed to Baskania? He struggled against his chains, but they were too tight.

The ghost picked up a sharp silver instrument and long, skinny scissors, then sat near Erec's face. He sighed, seemingly annoyed to be wasting his time, and jabbed the knife at Erec's right eye.

Erec squeezed his eyes shut. His body clenched in anticipation of the pain. He was afraid to open his eyes in case the ghost was waiting for him to do so. But finally he peeked, out of curiosity.

The silver surgeon was frowning in frustration. He kept poking again and again with the knife, the scissors, and the other tools around him. He could not get any of them within inches of Erec's face. They stopped in midair, as if they were hitting a force field.

Erec just about melted with relief. Not that he was even close to being safe. But at least he had a few more moments to figure out what to do.

But what could he do, chained flat on a dentist's chair, with Thanatos Baskania down below?

The ghost sneered. “You're making this difficult, aren't you? Well, no worries. We'll figure out a way to take those eyes out. I'm not going to tell the Shadow Prince he can't have what he wants.” He disappeared out the door into a hallway.

The oppressive air of Alypium was suffocating him. Why hadn't he remembered to take a bottle of Upper Earth air with him for little breaths, until he got used to it? The Substance, the network that carried all the magic of the world, had been messed up somehow in the Kingdoms of the Keepers. It made the air feel thick and nasty,
tinged with sadness. He couldn't wait until he grew accustomed to it so it wouldn't bother him anymore.

If he lived long enough for that to happen.

Erec felt sick. Everything he had done had been for nothing. He had finished two of the twelve quests that would let him become king. Around his neck hung the Amulet of Virtues which had appeared after his first quest, marking the number of quests he had done. Two of its twelve segments glowed with color. He had finished these quests even though he'd had serious doubts about being a king at all. But he knew what would happen otherwise. The Stain triplets, Baskania's helpers, would become kings and would destroy Alypium. And Baskania would be in charge. He couldn't let that happen.

Unfortunately, Erec had more than doubts about becoming king. He was terrified of it. Because he knew that if that happened, he would be given a scepter. As much as he wanted one, as much as he craved a scepter after using King Piter's, he knew it would corrupt him completely, turn him as evil as the Stains, and Baskania himself. What would be worse, letting his enemies crush the world or doing it himself? He still was not sure.

Erec pushed with all of his might against his chains, but he could not budge them. He dug his heels into the chair. Maybe he could slide his way out. Sure enough, after shimmying against the vinyl seat, he managed to inch just high enough to free one of his hands.

At that moment the ghost surgeon appeared with three others just like him. Erec froze. They did not seem to notice that he had slid upward in the chair.

Each of the ghost surgeons tried various ways to remove Erec's eyes. None was able to touch him, though, with anything they picked up. A short, paunchy one ran a hand up and down over Erec's arm. “Look at this,” he said to the others. “I can't even come close to this pathetic boy at all.”

They launched into a discussion, referring to Erec as a “rotten human” and “waste of space.”

“We must figure out how to fix this ourselves,” one said. “If Baskania finds out there is a problem, we'll all pay the price.”

“Wait,” another said, pointing at Erec. “We cannot touch him. But is he really protected from everything? Or just from us silver ghosts? Let's try calling in a human doctor to take his eye out.”

Erec's heart sank. They had figured it out. How would he get out of here now? Even if he worked his way through the chains, he would never escape all of the people in the Green House—especially Baskania—once they knew he was free.

The ghosts went out into the hallway to find a human doctor. Why had he been so stupid? If he had just controlled his thoughts in the Substance Channel he'd be safely with Bethany now, warning her not to make her deadly mistake.

There were still things he wanted to learn about himself, but now it was too late. He would never meet his father, whoever he was. And his birth mother. Where was she? And why did she leave him? Now he'd never know why he had been chosen to be king and do the quests. He would die knowing nothing about himself.

Erec tried to push farther through the chains, but he could barely move. He wished he had a cloudy thought now to save him. Why wasn't he getting one? Maybe there was no way to save himself. If only he could escape, fly out the window or something.

Erec bit his lip. Fly out the window…Maybe there
was
something he could do. Something that had saved him once before. At least he could try.

But first he needed to bring his dragon eyes forward. He took a deep breath and focused as hard as he could on one thing. Love. The love that was deep inside him. He thought of Aoquesth and all that the dragon had done for him. His family, his friends. But mostly just
love for the world. Because that was what he had to protect now.

Soon he felt his eyes turn in his head. Everything became a vivid green. Thick white ropes hung throughout the room. It was the Substance. Now that his dragon eyes were out, he could see it again.

Not much time was left before the human surgeon would come to take his eyes. This was his last chance.

He concentrated deeply on the love he felt inside. Then Erec looked out the window and focused all of his feelings into the sky, into the great networks of Substance that filled the air.

Aoquesth had taught him how to call dragons with his eyes. Using all of his strength and love, he called to them for help.
Dragons!
he pleaded.
Save me! If Baskania takes my eyes, and I can't find Bethany soon, our world will end
.

The door opened. Erec's dragon eyes swiveled back into his head. The room was no longer green. A tall, thin man walked in, followed by the silver ghosts. A few dark hairs were slicked over his bald head, and others stuck straight in the air. He wore a monocle over his pinched nose.

“Hmm.” The man stared at him and frowned. “I've seen you before. Don't know where, but I'm pretty sure you were up to no good.”

Erec shoved his heels against the chair and inched farther up through his chains. The ghosts tried to grab him, but could not touch him. They did not have to worry, though. He was far from being able to run away.

He wondered if any dragons had heard his call. If only they would come. Where were they? He tried to stall a minute longer. “I have met you,” he said, trying to think of what to say. “Wasn't it…at the coronation ceremony?”

The man frowned. “I wasn't there. Now hold still.” He grabbed a scalpel and put a hand on Erec's eyebrow.

Erec jerked his head away. He wiggled up more in the chair, but his free hand became caught again in the next chain.
Come on, dragons
, he thought. If they did not hear him he was lost.

The man grabbed Erec's head. “Here we go now. Won't be a minute.”

Erec twisted and fought, but he was pinned down. The man brought the sharp point of the knife to Erec's eye.

An ear-splitting crash made everyone jump. Glass and bricks flew through the room. A stream of fire tore through the air over Erec, blasting a wave of heat around him. A roar echoed through the noise of smashed plaster and wood clattering to the floor.

A dragon had broken through the wall around the window. The front half of its body twisted around the room, shooting blasts of fire. The surgeon backed away, yelping in fear. The ghosts watched, unafraid, yet unable to stop it.

The dragon reached a claw toward Erec. He jolted, suddenly realizing that even though he had called it, it might not recognize him. He held his breath.

The dragon slid a talon under his chains and yanked. In a moment he was free. It grabbed him with its claws and backed through the hole in the wall.

The dark-haired man watched, aghast. He looked back and forth as if he were trying to think how he could possibly stop a dragon. Then he grabbed a camera from his pocket and took a picture of Erec. “You're not supposed to do this!” he shouted. “This picture is evidence—you're a criminal. We'll find you, boy.”

The dragon whisked Erec into the sunlight and blue sky. Erec trembled, seeing the ground so far below him as the dragon whizzed higher toward the clouds. The rhythmic beating of its wings soon calmed him, and he realized he would not fall. Feeling the wind on his face while the earth sailed below him was incredible.

This was not the same feeling he'd had when he was riding on Aoquesth's back, holding one of his spines. Erec felt more like a mouse caught by a hawk. But the trees under him blended into a blur of yellow-green and lakes swirled into patterns with the shadows of mountains and valleys. Above him, the dragon's jointed black wings shot back and forth across the blue sky. He felt himself relax completely, absorbed by the beauty all around him.

Soon they landed on a rocky outcrop. Erec sat up and looked around. He was sure they were in Otherness. The dragon's purple-red scales and gleaming ruby red spines shone in the sunlight. But not until she spoke did he recognize her.

“Erec Rex,” she said. “We meet again.”

“Patchouli?” He looked at her reddish face, then he was sure it was her. He ran over and hugged her around the neck. “Thanks for rescuing me. You don't know how close I came to—”