The Secret of Ashona (10 page)

He eventually stopped trying to call them, and examined the cords holding him down. They definitely had some sort of magic in them. He couldn’t stretch or break them, even though they were small and soft. So he flopped back onto his bed and tried to resign himself to his new fate. A short life ended by turning evil and then into a Golem.

Erec must have shut his eyes for a moment, because he almost jumped a mile when he heard laughter right next to him. He turned to see who was there, but couldn’t find anybody. Anger filled him again. Was it Bethany, stupidly trying to cheer him up?

Then laughs erupted from the other side of the room, startling him again. Nobody was there. Soon chuckles echoed off and on from different corners of the room. Nervous, Erec called his mother and Bethany again.

They did not come. But out of nowhere, a small, dark man appeared, standing in front of Erec right on his bed. He laughed a sillier version of the more ominous laughter that had been filling his room before. “Are you ready to go? Because you look ready to me. What’s holding you up, boy? Afraid of the dark?”

It was the Hermit, the strange little guy assigned by King Piter to watch over Erec during his quests. He had a mysterious way of appearing right when Erec was ready to start or end his next quest. Erec had never been happier to see him than right now.

Today the Hermit was wearing a puffy pink and blue polka-dotted
nightgown that was far too big on him. It was bunched up around his ankles, and the sleeves hung past his hands. On his head was something that looked like a bright orange diaper. He crossed his arms and tapped his feet impatiently. “Is your life tying you down, Erec Rex? Find you can’t go all the places you want to go?” He giggled.

Erec held his hands up. “Can you get these things off me? I need to make it to the Diamond Minds of Argos—wherever that is—by noon.”

The Hermit pursed his lips, hopping off the bed. “Hmm. So I take it that you want to do this quest after all, even though you have gone to all this trouble to keep yourself here?”

“I do want to go! My mom did this to me. Can you get these off?”

The Hermit reached under the orange diaper and scratched his bald head. “I don’t know. Let me see.” He whistled a moment, inspecting the cords and tapping them. “Silly boy. All you have to do is blow on these things. Give it a try.”

Erec blew on one of the cords just as the Hermit snapped it off. “Wow! I didn’t know I could do that.” He blew on the other three in turn, even though he was sure that the Hermit was doing his own magic on the cords before he even blew.

Soon he climbed out of the bed, exhilarated that he was free. But a moment later he remembered what he had to do next. He was about to go give his life up. How could he do it? Was he really ready?

“Hermit, am I making the right choice?”

The Hermit eyed him skeptically. “Do you really think that there is a right choice, Erec Rex? There is no right answer, only what is right for you. You already have your answer. There are no other answers, only questions. Now it is up to you to pick the right questions.”

That didn’t help at all. “Am I going to survive this quest? What should I do?”

Erec’s questions made the Hermit burst out laughing. He did a
silly dance in a circle, singing, “What should I do? What should I do?” until Erec got angry.

“Cut it out! I might die if I try to finish this quest.”

“Not true!” the Hermit exclaimed. “You
will
die. And you’re not even enjoying it!” The Hermit seemed to take great pleasure in Erec’s situation.

In his overwhelmed state, Erec went from being angry at the Hermit to confused to almost laughing with him. Finally he shouted, “Just tell me what to do!”

The Hermit said, dead serious. “Stay here. Skip the quest.”

“But . . . but . . .” That was not at all what he expected the Hermit to say. “I can’t. What would happen to Trevor . . . and to those people who would die? And my chances of ever getting my soul back?”

The Hermit winked at him with a grin. “I told you, you already had your answer. Now you’re just asking the right questions.” He held a finger to his lips, shushing Erec, and led him to the closet. “I brought you a present.” When he opened the closet door, Erec saw a new Port-O-Door had been set into the wall. “Ta-da! Are you ready to visit the Diamond Minds of Argos?”

Erec nodded. He had to do this now before fear completely overcame him. He would just go and see what lay waiting for him there, not what would happen around the corner. Maybe there would be a way to save himself. There had to be.

When the Hermit opened the Port-O-Door, Erec walked into its vestibule. He waited while the Hermit pulled up a map of Otherness and found a place called Argos, far on the edges of a desert with no civilization nearby.

In a moment, Erec and the Hermit were walking out the door into a place like none that Erec had ever seen. Giant holes riddled the ground, and between them huge towering columns of rock shot up to the sky. Small stone paths wound like mazes between the holes and the
columns. Erec saw no houses, no animals, no people. Only hard rock as far as the eye could see. He followed the Hermit along a winding path, careful not to take a wrong step and plummet down one of the round holes in the ground. When he leaned over and looked down into one of them, he could see something glowing red near the bottom.

“Be careful not to slip into one of the pits. Would not be pleasant for you at the bottom.”

“What is down there?” Erec asked, focusing on his footsteps. The path they walked on varied from a few feet wide to just a few inches across.

“Those are the famous Diamond Minds. Not very fun to visit.” The Hermit shook his head.

“Are those like diamond mines? Where diamonds come from?”

“No, silly boy. These are not diamond mines. The Diamond
Minds
of Argos are the creatures that live at the bottoms of the pits. They are ancient and powerful. Those funny little Diamond Minds know everything that has ever happened, and they can tell you what will come to be, if you’re foolish enough to want to know. Once they lived together in a great community, and were one of the rare groups allowed to speak with the Fates.”

Erec glanced again into one of the pits. Whatever glowed red down there might know what the future had in store for his family. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could just ask . . . ?

The Hermit giggled, seeming to know what Erec was thinking. “It is normal to want to know. Which was part of the problem. The Diamond Minds became too important for their little britches. People would come from all over to see them. And the Diamond Minds would tell people their futures, yes they would. But that is doing nobody a favor, right, Erec? Are you enjoying your visions of your future?”

Erec tried not to think of what the Hermit conjured up, and shook his head.

“No,” the Hermit continued. “The Diamond Minds wanted to prove how smart they were. So they
would
tell the travelers their futures, and that was too bad. There was death in all stories—family members, people themselves. Disease. Heartbreak. Despair. And the Diamond Minds did not leave out one detail.”

The Hermit paused to do a cartwheel, which seemed to Erec a little risky with the deep holes all around. He giggled a moment. “But the people kept coming. You know how silly people are—you’re one of those crazy creatures! They kept wanting to hear what awful things lay waiting for them. And the Diamond Minds got full of themselves, and started asking people to pay a price. Whatever was most precious to them as a token for telling their futures. The Diamond Minds competed to see who would get the best prizes, as if they deserved them, as if they showed who was ‘best.’

“And of course, what would happen next? The Minds started to hate one another. Before long there was a terrible war, but not one with only two sides. There were exactly twelve hundred and seventy-two factions in this war.” The Hermit waved a finger in the air. “Each Diamond Mind was fighting against all of the others. Hate grew along with despair, death, and destruction. Outsiders would still visit, and the Diamond Minds became ruthless at extracting their most precious gifts, and often that was their lives.”

The Hermit shrugged. “Finally, the Fates locked each of the Diamond Minds into its own little pit, to stop the whole crazy mess. Their small bodies wore away, leaving those glowing minds to live on for eternity. A funny joke, I think.” He giggled.

Erec wasn’t sure why the Hermit thought that was funny. “What are the columns here for?”

“Oh, they are posts that the little Diamond Minds once used to talk to the Fates. They threw away all the good cheese for one smelly bit.”

Farther on, they reached a small hut in the midst of the holes and columns. It looked oddly new among the ruins. “What is this place?” Erec looked around, but the Hermit was no longer within sight.

He peeked through a window and saw a Port-O-Door appear in a wall of the hut’s one room. A man wearing a suit stumbled out, and the Port-O-Door disappeared. The man stared into space, wandering aimlessly. Then he stopped, frozen, in the center of the room.

Next to him stood a woman in a dress, her dark hair up in a bun. She turned toward the man but stared past him in another direction, a blank look on her face. A small painting rested in her arms.

Two more Port-O-Doors appeared in rapid succession. First a young man with dark skin tripped into the room, barely righting himself before he fell. He carried a large white box. A gray-haired man then followed, hands in front of his face as if he was feeling his way in the dark. He bumped into the first man, and they both jumped in surprise.

Something was wrong. The people clearly could not see anything. Were they blind? Erec had no doubt that these were four of the five people that were supposed to be killed by Baskania. Then he heard a familiar voice. He darted away from the window before anybody could see him. Barely peeking again from the other side, he was surprised to find someone inside that he knew from the contests in Alypium: Balor Stain’s friend Ward Gamin.

Why was Ward here? Shouldn’t he be hanging out in Alypium learning magic with the other kids? He looked pale and shaky. A patch covered one of his eyes, and he was wearing a dark suit jacket that hung off of him, several sizes too large. “I’m glad that you could come here today,” he announced to the room, no emotion in his voice. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. Erec realized he was reading off a piece of paper. “You have come to see . . . I mean,
experience
one of the last remaining great miracles of the modern . . . um, age. The modern
age. You are going to each meet one of the famous Diamond Minds of the past. They have been made safe for your convenience. The wonders of what you are about to behold will stay with you for the rest of your lives. Be honored that you were chosen by our great leaders to be some of the first to learn the secrets of your futures. Nothing will be held back from you when you meet the amazing Diamond Minds.”

The four people in the room leaned toward his voice, looking excited, even though they stared in random directions.

“I would like to thank you again on behalf of the Shadow Prince for the generous donations that you have made to come here. You are donating your most valued treasures to his cause. And all of your eyes will be well taken care of. As you were told, eyes must be removed temporarily in order to visit the Diamond Minds. Seeing them would be disastrous. But they will be returned to you safely after today. I will now take your additional gifts, which I understand are your most valued treasures.”

Erec was so amazed at what he heard that he stepped into full view through the window. There was no danger of the four blind people seeing him, and Ward Gamin was facing the other way. Ward was taking gifts from them and the Shadow Prince had removed their eyes—so they would be “allowed” to meet the Diamond Minds? So they didn’t know that would kill them?

The woman held out her small framed picture. “This has been passed down through our family for centuries. Rembrandt was a famous artist on my grandfather’s side. This is the only one left to us. . . .” She paused, choked up. “But giving this to the cause is a small token for this opportunity. Thank you.”

Ward removed the painting from her hands. The gray-haired man pulled a small box from his pocket. “This ten-carat diamond engagement ring was my mother’s.” His hand clenched the box rhythmically, not wanting to give it up. “I gave it to my wife. We don’t have much
else now, but I’m happy to trade it for this. The Shadow Prince said that we will all be rich from the information we’ll get today, right? Maybe I can afford another one someday for my wife. Not one quite this big, but . . .” Ward struggled to take the box from him.

The first man that had come in held out a small keychain. “Here is the key to our chalet in the south of France. It’s a beautiful place, right near the Alps. My parents saved their whole lives to buy it. I’ll miss it.” He shrugged. “But bigger and better things to come, right?”

The dark-skinned man held out his white box. “I just can’t wait to get my eyes back again. I hate not seeing things.” He sighed. “This is the most valuable thing I own. It’s a magical wallet that keeps refilling itself with money. It never runs out. My wife about killed me when I said I was going to trade it in. She told me it was the end of our marriage.” He bit his lip. “Maybe she’ll change her mind when I come home richer in even more ways. I almost didn’t come today, but Balor Stain himself paid me a visit to tell me how important this was. He said he would consider me for an adviser position when he becomes king.” The man smiled with anticipation.

Erec could not believe what he was hearing. Balor and Baskania had conned these people into giving up their most valued possessions, as well as their eyes, in order to die? Wasn’t it enough to kill people without robbing them blind—literally—first? How could Ward Gamin do this to these people? Erec wondered what they had done that made Baskania want them gone.

But where was the fifth person who he was supposed to save? Maybe whoever it was would arrive soon. Ward led the group outside, guiding them with his hands. When they were all standing on a wide ledge near the door, Ward told them to stop. He put his hands on the woman’s shoulders and led her to the edge of one of the deep pits in the stone.