“Right. I noticed that the hole we came through is gone.”
“As is much of the passage you traveled. Soon it will all collapse.” Jade looked up. “Of course, you may climb the abyss from here to the top. It is a dangerous venture, especially if you continue to encumber yourself with Lauren’s body. If you slip and fall, you will suffer the eternal plunge, which is far worse than death.”
“I think we’ll avoid that option.” Matt pointed at the honeycomb. “Can you locate the portal to Abaddon’s Lair for me? I want to see what’s going on in there.”
“Of course.” Jade gently pushed Darcy toward Matt. “She is calm now, and her sanity has returned for the moment. Make sure she avoids looking at the mirror.”
Matt enfolded Darcy in his arms. “Keep your eyes closed. I’ll let you know what’s going on.”
“Thank you, Matt.” She nestled closer and laid her head against his shoulder. “I heard what Jade said about contributing life energy. I hope you’re not planning to do that.”
“The thought crossed my mind. If I die, you’ll have to figure out how to resurrect Lauren. My mother’s instructions are on my phone, so—”
“No!” She pulled back and glared at him. “Matt, I can barely keep my mind from taking a hike down loony lane. There’s no way I’d be able to do it. I wouldn’t be worth a nickel.”
“Okay. Calm down.” He pushed her head against his shoulder. “Just close your eyes. I’ll see what Jade comes up with. Maybe I’ll get another idea.”
Jade walked to the wall and touched the mirror at eye level, her hands in the positions of the four corners of a four-foot-wide square. As the green stone in her sternum grew brighter, the glass within the square darkened, first to gray then to black. When she lifted her hands, the square remained. Like night becoming day, the blackness faded, leaving behind a transparent window.
“If memory serves,” she said as she crossed one pair of arms over her chest, “this should be the portal to Abaddon’s Lair. Come and look.”
Matt whispered to Darcy, “Follow my lead and keep your eyes straight ahead. You’ll see a square window. Focus on that.”
“Okay.”
They walked to where Jade stood. Two arms still crossed, she gestured with a third arm toward the window. “Abaddon’s resurrection chamber.”
Matt took a step closer and peered through. Within a dim room, a stone table stood at a distance that appeared to be only a few steps away. About ten feet long, five feet wide, and four feet high, the table held several wooden mounts, all empty except for the tallest one, which supported a large, glass egg. Three short, thick candles sat near the egg, two of them burning with disturbed flames and providing the room’s only light, while a thin line of smoke rose at a sharp angle from the third candle, apparently snuffed by a breeze.
A finger-length vial lying on its side rolled slowly back and forth between two of the candles, and a foot-tall hourglass sat nearby, its sand trickling slowly to a small pile in the bottom half.
Near the table’s edge, a page fluttered on a huge book that lay open on a four-footed stand next to a quill-like pen perched in an inkwell. A dull banging sound, like wood against wood, permeated the chamber, rhythmic and distant.
“There must be quite a breeze in there.” Matt narrowed his eyes and tried to focus beyond the table. As his vision adjusted, the far wall took shape where shutters swung open and closed over a window. “Do you know where that window leads?”
Jade shook her head. “I do not spy on Abaddon’s domain. I leave his business to him, and he leaves mine to me, but I once visited this room, and I am certain that it was as motionless as death. There was no open window.”
“Abaddon told me he was sending Second Eden refugees home from his world. Maybe that open window is a passage of some kind.”
“While you ponder this mystery, I will locate the correct spot on the sanctum’s heart so that you will have the opportunity to donate life energy if you so choose.” Jade walked to the column and spread her four hands over the surface, covering most of the side facing the portal. She drew her fingers slowly toward her palms, then pulled her hands back until only the end of an index finger touched the surface.
When one of the hexagons blackened under her finger, she stepped away. The hole remained black while the rest continued pulsing red. “If you touch the column at this spot, it will drain your life energy and open the portal.”
Darcy stared at the column, her eyes again turning distant and vacant.
Matt grasped her shoulders. “No, Darcy! Don’t even think about it. You’re not going to open the portal.”
“I know,” she said in an expressionless tone. “You need me. I saved your life. I help with Lauren. You can’t do this by yourself.”
“Exactly. So we have to find another option.” Matt looked at Jade. “There are other portals, right? Other ways to get to Abaddon’s Lair?”
“There have been other portals, but when I searched the sanctum’s heart for the location of the portal you hope to open, I found only one other.” Jade touched the edge of the square leading to the chamber. “I now suspect that the shuttered window on the wall is that portal. Because Lauren created it with the tree of life, it required no protection for passage from either side, but now it is what you might call a fire-escape portal. When escaping a burning building, a person hurries through but would not dare go back. With this portal, people may pass from Abaddon’s Lair to the tree’s chamber without harm, but coming back requires protection. My guess is that Abaddon altered it to a one-way passage to ensure that the refugees do not return.”
Matt set a hand on the square. It felt like glass, though his fingers didn’t leave a smudge. Since it spanned from knees to forehead, it would be easy to step through once it opened, even with Lauren’s body still on his back. “How long will this stay here? I mean, when will I have to decide what we’re going to do?”
“It will last about ten minutes, but I can easily make it again. Creating a viewing window to any world is a simple matter as long as a portal already exists. It requires no energy just to look and listen.”
“I understand.” Matt studied the objects in the room—the book, the vial, the egg, everything necessary to resurrect a soul. Everything except the soul itself. It would be crazy to sacrifice himself and send Darcy to resurrect Lauren when they didn’t even know if Lauren’s soul was there.
After a few seconds, strange sounds drifted through the window—first a scraping noise, like stone on stone, then a grunt, low but feminine. The combination continued in the same order, scraping and grunting, drawing closer with each repetition.
“Do sounds pass through both ways?” Matt asked.
Jade shook her head. “Sounds travel from there to here, though perhaps someone who possessed Lauren’s gift of hearing could detect sounds from either world.”
Soon, a woman came into view, her back toward the portal window. She dragged a dark humanlike statue, tilted at an angle so she could wrap her arms around its shoulders. A spyglass swung at one hip and a scabbard at the other, both attached to a belt wrapped around a form-fitting beige tunic and loose black trousers.
Every few seconds, she set her feet, heaved the statue a yard or so, and repositioned her arms and feet to pull again. With each heave, dark pigtails swayed against her back. When she turned to the side, a small glass egg floated into view and hovered close to her nose.
Matt whispered to Darcy. “That’s Listener. I told you about her.”
Darcy stared, her mouth agape. “What is that egg? It’s flying, but it doesn’t have wings.”
“Her companion. All residents of Second Eden have one. It’s like an external conscience. I don’t know how it flies.”
“Sir Barlow!” Listener shouted as she set the statue upright. “Do you need help?”
“Coming, Miss!” A new scraping sound followed in the wake of the first. Seconds later, Sir Barlow entered the room, draggin
g another statue. With a scabbard and a pistol attached to his belt, he looked ready for a battle.
He set his statue next to the first one. “I apologize for the delay. For a moment, it seemed to have a mind of its own, but I suppose my own mind has deteriorated in this strange world of rapid transformations. As they say, a mind is a terrible thing to haste.”
“Haste?” Listener narrowed her eyes. “What a strange phrase.”
“It is, indeed, Miss. I think it has to do with overtaxing one’s mind, but I am not certain. For my part, I simply try to employ idioms to fit into a new environment, as the idiom states, to become birds of a feather.”
“I have heard that one.” Listener strode to the book on the stand and flipped to a page near the back. “Where did Abaddon say the instructions are?” The shutters banged, and the breeze blew the pages toward the front. Listener gave the book a sour stare and began flipping the pages again.
“I will take care of it, Miss.” Sir Barlow hurried to the window. He peered through the opening and called out, “Tamara! We are back in the resurrection chamber. We will come through soon.”
A feminine voice replied from far away. “Thank you. I will . . . take these . . . children to . . . to Second Eden.” Her cadence kept faltering, an obvious speech impediment. “I’ll see you . . . when you get here. . . . And thank you . . . for the flowers. . . . They are lovely.”
“My pleasure, though they are not as lovely as you are.” After bowing, he closed the shutters, and locked them in place.
“Wasn’t that sweet?” Darcy whispered to Matt. “So Tamara and Sir Barlow are romantically involved, just like your mother dreamed.”
Sir Barlow hurried back to Listener and used one of the burning candles to relight the third. “Even if the book has instructions, I believe this effort is doomed to fail. Neither of us has a drop of dragon blood in our veins, that is, ever since one of your companions left.”
Listener drummed her fingers on the table. “I don’t care if we have a one percent chance of success. We’re not going to leave these souls here. Abaddon told me face to face to get every last soul out, so I’m going to bust my backside to get it done.”
“True, Miss, but in our world, the idiom ‘every last soul’ refers to living people, that is, the Second Eden refugees, not to literal souls. Very few idioms are literal. I should know. I am an expert on their proper use.”
“I’m not going to take any chances.” Listener looked at the hourglass, her brow furrowing. “We don’t have much time left.”
While Listener flipped through pages, Darcy touched the window. “Matt,” she said, her voice now well above a whisper. “She’s so perfect! She’s tough, assertive, and responsible.”
Listener looked up from the page and faced the portal window. “Did you hear something?”
Sir Barlow gazed in the same direction. “Nothing unusual, Miss. Perhaps the hiss of the candle wick I just lit, but it is as quiet as a mausoleum here.”
“I heard a woman’s voice.” Listener walked around the table and headed directly for the portal. When she drew close, she stopped and set her hands around the window’s perimeter and let out a slight grunt. “This mirror is anchored to the wall. I can’t pry it loose.” As she stared at the portal again, her reddish-brown eyes sparkled.
Darcy gasped. “Matt! Listener is beautiful! Just like you said, like a goddess from storybooks!”
Listener cocked her head. “What is this? A mirror that compliments your looks?”
“Well, Miss . . .” Sir Barlow walked closer to the portal. “I assume you’re hearing things that I cannot.”
“This mirror just told me that I’m beautiful. It said something about storybooks.”
Sir Barlow raised a finger. “Ah! There is a storybook in my world about a wicked queen who looked into a mirror and asked who is the fairest in the land, and the mirror always told her that she was the most beautiful until a certain girl blossomed into womanhood and became fairer. This enraged the queen, so she—”
“Never mind,” Listener said. “I remember now. I heard that story from Walter.” She detached the spyglass and looked through it at the window. “How strange. I see a faint pulse of red light and shadowy silhouettes. Maybe this bizarre mirror world has many fairy-tale objects.”
Matt called out, “Listener! Can you hear me?”
She lowered the spyglass. “I thought I heard Matt.”
“Matt?” Sir Barlow looked over Listener’s shoulder and peered at the window. “Matt Bannister?”
“Yes, of course. Do you know another Matt?”
“I beg your pardon, Miss, but since you heard a voice from a mirror, I couldn’t be certain that you weren’t referring to a floor mat or some other kind of mat.”
“Don’t be silly.” Listener reattached the spyglass to her belt. “Matt, I heard you speak. Can you hear me?”
He leaned closer. “I can. I’m at some sort of portal-viewing window. I’m trying to get through so I can resurrect Lauren.”
“Resurrect Lauren? So she’s . . .” Listener’s chin quivered. “How did she die?”
“It’s hard to explain, but she died killing Tamiel. She sacrificed herself to save the world. I’m carrying her body, and I need to open this portal so I can bring her across for resurrection.”
“What makes you think her soul is here in Abaddon’s Lair?”
Matt shifted his shoulders to adjust Lauren’s weight. “Since the souls of so many of my mother’s friends and relatives came here for resurrection, we thought maybe hers did, too.”
Listener relayed Matt’s words. As Sir Barlow listened, a tear trickled down his swarthy cheek. “Well, I must say that explains a lot.”
Listener blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
“When that statue resisted, I thought I heard a voice from inside it, but I was certain it had to be my imagination. As I said before, my mind is deteriorating. I assumed the voice was merely a symptom.”
Listener grasped Sir Barlow’s arm. “What did it say?”
“It was the strangest thing, like an echo that repeated again and again in a soft, feminine whisper, ’I’ll see you in the morning.’”
“I’ll see you in the morning?” Matt swallowed. “Are you sure?”
When Listener repeated Matt’s question, Sir Barlow shook his head. “I am not one hundred percent sure of the exact words, but I believe it was something to that effect.”
Matt began unfastening Lauren’s harness. “That’s good enough for me.”
“What do you mean?” Listener asked.
“I’ve been told that to open the portal someone has to feed energy into a controller in this place I’m standing. Now that I know Lauren’s soul is there, I can supply my energy and send Darcy across with Lauren’s body. My mother gave us instructions, so the three of you can figure out how to resurrect her.”
Listener furrowed her brow. “Who is Darcy? The woman I heard earlier?”
“Yes. She’s a friend of mine. I’ll let her explain when she gets there.”
“And you won’t come with her?”
“No. I’ll let Darcy explain that, too.” While Matt shrugged and pulled his arms free from the harness, Darcy helped him lower Lauren to the ground. As her chest passed by Matt’s hip, the beads in Mom’s necklace glowed, each one pulsing its own color in time with the sanctum heart’s rhythm.
“The key.” Darcy touched the ring on Matt’s belt loop. “Remember? We think it energizes the beads somehow.”
“Right.” When they had settled Lauren on the floor, Matt detached the ring and set it on her chest. When the nearly invisible key touched the necklace, the beads pulsed with radiance. “The key ring will have to go with her.”
“But Matt, you can’t—”
“Listen.” He pulled the cloak from the harness and handed it to Darcy. “When the portal opens, throw the cloak to Sir Barlow and ask him to put it on and carry Lauren across. The
n he can throw the cloak back to you so you can pass.”
Darcy dropped the cloak to the floor. She shook her head slowly, then faster and faster. Finally, she pressed her palms on the sides of the window and shouted, “Listener! I’m Darcy.” Her voice rose and fell as she struggled to spit out her words. “I used to be . . . um . . . Matt’s foster sister, but I wasn’t a good sister . . . I was an evil witch . . . but that’s not important . . . at least not anymore. . . . We made friends again.”
Matt grabbed her arm. “Darcy! Don’t! Just let me—”
“No!” Darcy jerked away. “I can’t let you! I won’t let you!” She turned again to the window, her voice now steadier. “Listener, Matt is planning to sacrifice his life to open the portal. Someone has to give his life energy to open it, and whoever does that will die.”
“If I may,” Jade said in a calm tone as she picked up the cloak. “As I mentioned earlier, it is possible for the sanctum’s heart to collect energy through the window. If one of them were to volunteer, I could arrange the transfer.”
While Listener whispered the message to Barlow, Matt shook his head. “Lauren’s my sister. I’m the one who should sacrifice for her. Sir Barlow and Listener aren’t related at all.”
Sir Barlow cleared his throat. “Listener has informed me of the quandary, and I would like to volunteer. You see, Matthew, only someone who has dragon blood can interpret the resurrection instructions, and since Listener lost her dragon essence years ago, you are the only one who possesses that qualification.” He smiled, revealing an uneven set of teeth. “I have lived a good, long life of more than fifteen hundred years. I am ready to die for such a cause as this.”
Darcy pressed so close, her nose nearly touched the glass. “But what about Tamara? You can’t leave her.”
Again Listener repeated the message.
Sir Barlow’s smile wavered. “It will be painful, but we will see each other again in Heaven.” He shrugged. “Besides, I have been transluminated. If I were to return to Earth, I would be nothing but light energy, so I am clearly the best candidate. Tamara will understand.”