The Rise of the Wrym Lord
( The Door Within - 2 )
Wayne Thomas Batson
Wayne Thomas Batson
The Rise of the Wrym Lord
1
THE SPECTRAL WINDOW
T hunder rolled, heavy and abrupt, shaking the windowpanes of Aidan’s room. Aidan put down the scrolls he had been reading and got up to look out at the approaching storm. He could smell the rain in the air, but it hadn’t actually started to fall. Aidan stood at the open window. A chill breeze swept in across his face and forearms. His skin tingled. The tiny hairs on his arms stood up.
The neighborhood lay in darkness. Few lights were on. That’s strange, Aidan thought. It’s just nine o’clock.
The whispering breeze swayed the pines in the front yard, but little else moved. The sky, thick with storm clouds, swelled and seemed to press down upon the shadowy houses.
Lightning flickered. In the brief blue flash, Aidan had seen eyes. He knew those eyes. Aidan blinked, and the eyes were gone. Thunder growled. The wind picked up. Aidan could not will himself to leave the window. Something is wrong, he thought.
Another flash bathed the neighborhood in intense blue light. For a moment a pale being appeared, just outside the window.
“Captain Valithor?” Aidan mouthed. Thunder cracked sharply and rolled away.
The next time the lightning came, the image of the Glimpse Captain appeared in more detail. He seemed to be standing by a smooth wall of stone. And, wait! There was another knight standing near… a very familiar knight.
Another bright flash, and the image grew wider still, a spectral window opening so that Aidan could see another time in another world. And this time, the vision did not fade. Aidan knew the scene. He had lived it-just weeks earlier in The Realm where the Glimpse twins of all humanity dwell.
Aidan had been dubbed a knight in the service of King Eliam, noble ruler of Alleble. The scene had taken place before dawn. Aidan had found the Captain alone, staring out over the seventh fountain in the courtyard before the castle. That fountain was dry and had ceased to flow since it had been used to fulfill Paragor’s traitorous plan.
It was then that Captain Valithor had shown Aidan how Paragor’s rebellion failed-how he and his horde of traitors had been cast out of the kingdom in disgrace.
Lightning split the sky. The neighborhood faded, and suddenly, Aidan was there in The Realm again.
“Captain, I’ve seen Paragor.”
“What?” The Sentinel looked up, his eyes narrowed, posture tensed. “Where?”
“It was in a dream I had before I entered The Realm.”
Tension melted from Captain Valithor. He sighed with relief. “That is natural, Aidan. When you read the scrolls-it is bound to influence your dreams.”
“But it was a dream I had before I found the scrolls.”
Captain Valithor’s eyes widened.
Aidan continued, “I had the same horrible dream over and over again. I was in the ruins of a kingdom. I was captured, and Paragor told me to deny my King. I refused, and… and he killed me.”
Captain Valithor staggered backward and steadied himself on the wall of the fountain. “Aidan, I…”
“What is it?” Aidan was alarmed.
The Captain swallowed. Then he mastered himself. “Aidan, no matter what, tell no one else of this dream.”
“But, why?”
“No one! Do you understand? I must seek the King’s wisdom, for my own is found wanting in this. Remember, no one!”
Aidan’s gut churned, and the hair stood up on the nape of his neck. “I won’t tell anyone, Captain,” he whispered. “I promise.”
Thunder crashed. Aidan blinked until the disorientation passed. He was back in his room. The wind howled through the open window, and the rain began to fall in sheets. Aidan slammed the window shut and pulled the curtains. He looked at the scrolls on his bed and wondered: Why did Captain Valithor become so disturbed when he heard about my dream? Why didn’t he want me to tell anyone else about it? Aidan went to his parents’ bedroom. He knocked once.
“Come on in, Aidan,” his mom said, and he entered. “All ready for your first day at your new school?” she asked, but then she stared at him. “Aidan, are you all right? You look pale.”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he replied. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s downstairs somewhere, I think,” she said. She got out of bed and put her hand on his forehead.
“Mom, I’m fine.”
She mussed the waves of his dark brown hair and smiled. “I can’t believe you’re getting so much older. Getting tall. You’ve lost those chubby cheeks you used to have. You look like your father when I met him-what with those bushy eyebrows and big ol’ puppy-dog brown eyes.”
“Oh, Mom,” Aidan said, but he laughed and was pleased he was looking older. “So Dad’s in the kitchen?”
“I’m not sure, honey. He went down about an hour ago. Haven’t seen him since.”
“Thanks,” Aidan replied. Quickly Aidan went downstairs to look for his dad. Aidan spied him through the French doors of what was now the study. It had been Grampin’s room. Aidan felt a tug at the pit of his stomach. Grampin had died the very day Aidan returned from The Realm, and Aidan still missed him terribly. Grampin had, after all, helped Aidan understand the message and answer the invitation in the mysterious scrolls Aidan had discovered in the basement.
Aidan’s father sat on the floor with an old photo album in his lap and stared at it so intensely that he didn’t even notice his son standing there. Aidan sighed. He’d talk to his dad later.
He went to the kitchen, poured himself a soda, and looked around as if to say, “Now what?” Thunder rolled softly in the distance. Aidan glanced at the clock. He didn’t feel a bit sleepy. After this latest vision, he doubted very much that he could sleep anyway.
“I know!” Aidan stood up; he grabbed his drink and headed to the basement.
2
RED FOR THE EYES?
W hen he needed to think, Aidan often went to the basement to work on his latest art project. And after his last vision, he needed to think plenty. He looked up at the canvas. I should have finished this days ago. But he hadn’t finished it.
Aidan frowned and then squeezed the tube of red acrylic paint until a small crimson pool formed in the bottom of his cup. Too much red, he thought. Just a drop would have been enough for the eyes.
He daubed his fine brush in the paint, lifted it slowly to the canvas, and stopped. I don’t want his eyes to be red. I want them to be blue! Aidan put the paintbrush down and rubbed his temples. How am I ever going to get Robby to understand, if I can’t talk to him?
Aidan shook his head and absently scanned the basement. Funny, he thought. It all started down here with the scrolls. He looked over toward the alcove beneath the stairs, now crammed full of cardboard boxes he and his dad had moved to make room for Aidan’s art studio. Aidan shook his head and laughed quietly.
He glanced around the room at his finished paintings, all illuminated by the conical track lights he and his father had installed. The five paintings were a kind of visual history of Aidan’s adventures-the Castle of Alleble, Grimwalk, Falon’s Labyrinth, the Black Crescent, and the Glimpses of Paragor.
On the first canvas sprawled the Castle of Alleble and its vast courtyard, where Captain Valithor, the Sentinel and chief knight of Alleble, had trained an inexperienced and timid Aidan, turning him into a brave warrior and eventually a hero. “Stir your stumps, Aidan, thou lumpish tardy-gaited puttock!!” Aidan grinned, remembering the tongue-lashings the Captain used to give him. It had scared Aidan half to death at first, but it really did toughen him up. Aida
n had much to thank his Captain for.
Valithor had sacrificed his own mighty life for Aidan. It was a sacrifice that still hit home in many ways, for Captain Valithor was the Glimpse of Aidan’s grandfather. His death in The Realm had also meant Grampin’s death on earth. Aidan often wished that he could have spoken to Grampin one last time before he died. There was still so much more Aidan yearned to know about The Realm-and about the visions. Captain Valithor had seemed to know something… had Grampin known it too?
The next painting was all stormy grays and wintry whites, depicting the cold and desolate Grimwalk. Paragor, the dark ruler of that inhospitable region, had conjured forth a devastating storm to waylay Aidan and his team of knights from Alleble. There, Aidan had saved the life of Gwenne, his closest Glimpse friend, and received a kiss on the cheek for his troubles. Not a bad deal, Aidan thought with a warm smile. He wondered what Gwenne had been doing in The Realm since he left. Probably out on an adventure-some mission for King Eliam, no doubt. He wondered if she thought of him as much as he thought of her. If only I could… but he shook the thought away. Aidan knew there was no going back… not until the end.
The next painting was of the subterranean maze known as Falon’s Labyrinth. It was there that Aidan encountered a serpentine creature more fearsome than anything that lurked in his darkest nightmares. But in that fateful meeting, Aidan did not perish. Instead, he gained a powerful ally.
The last of Aidan’s finished paintings was a panoramic view of the Black Crescent. It was there, under the inspiration of King Eliam, that Aidan had pulled off a victory so startling that it earned him the title Knight of the Dawn and saw his name added to a very select list of Alleble’s heroes. Aidan ran his fingers across the long raised scar on his right forearm. The scar was a very real reminder of his adventures, but to Aidan’s continuing frustration, his mother refused to believe that the sharp blade of a sword had caused that wound. Aidan wondered what it would take to convince her that King Eliam, The Scrolls of Alleble, The Realm, and her decision to believe were all very real. So real in fact that they were a matter of life and death.
And that brought Aidan back to the canvas in front of him. It was a scene from The Realm like the others, but not a place he had been personally. It had come from another one of his visions-the visions that came in dreams or when he traveled between earth and The Realm, like tonight with the lightning. Some of the visions had been foretelling, but not all had come true yet. There was one vision that Aidan desperately hoped would never come to pass. In this vision, there was a cavernous hall, lit from above by a flaming chandelier. Beneath it, raising goblets as if in victory, were soldiers dressed in the dark armor of Paragory. Some of the Glimpse warriors had eyes that glinted green, the color of the undecided. Most of them had eyes that glinted red, a sign of service to Paragor. One of these red-eyed knights, Aidan recognized all too well. It was the Glimpse of Robby, his best friend from Maryland.
Aidan picked up the paintbrush, and instead of giving red eyes to the painted version of his friend, he dipped the brush into a clear cup of water and watched the color bleed away to nothing. If there is a way to reach Robby, he thought, then King Eliam will show me.
SLAM!! Aidan jumped, almost knocking over the stool and all his paints. Heavy footfalls bounded down the stairs, and there, looking breathless and feverishly excited, was Aidan’s dad.
“Aidan!” he said. “I’m glad you’re still awake. You’ve got to come see what I’ve found!”
“What?!”
“Well, I was boxing up some of Grampin’s stuff in his old study, and I got this weird feeling I was being watched. When I looked up, one of the books on Grampin’s bookshelves was sticking out.”
Aidan smiled, but shrugged.
“Aidan, it was Grampin’s diary. Inside, there’s a note for you.”
3
GRAMPIN’S DIARY
T he first entry is dated March sixth 1940,” Aidan’s dad explained, holding the diary in both hands. “Can you believe Grampin wrote in this diary for more than sixty years?”
“It looks old,” Aidan replied. Stains, cuts, scrapes, and smudges marred the dark brown leather cover. It had a tarnished coppery color at the binding. A ragged reddish tassel stuck out from the pages. “But how could he fit sixty years of writing into just one book? There can’t be any more than three-four hundred pages in there.”
“Well, from what I can tell, he didn’t write every day. There are some places where he skipped whole years between entries. Maybe he just wrote about special occasions.”
“So where’s the note for me?” Aidan asked.
“It’s at the end,” his dad replied. “It’s the last entry.” As Aidan’s father flipped through the yellowed pages, Aidan caught sight of innumerable passages written in Grampin’s bold handwriting, as well as hand-drawn sketches and maps. Finally, Aidan’s dad reached the last entry.
“I haven’t read it yet,” he said, closing the diary just enough to send Aidan’s curiosity off the charts. “As soon as I saw the date of the entry and realized it was addressed to you, I came to find you. Do you want me to read it out-”
“Read it already, Dad!” Aidan interrupted.
“Okay, okay! Here goes!”
Dear Aidan,
I trust you’ll find this when you get back from The Realm. I don’t expect I’ll be able to talk to you again, and that’s a pity. This old heart of mine is about to quit, I think. Took every last bit of energy I had to send that bundle of scrolls into The Realm after you!
“Remember, Dad? I told you about that!”
“I still can’t believe he got himself up and down the stairs,” Aidan’s father replied, shaking his head. “I guess I shouldn’t be so shocked. Dad still had some strength in those arms of his.”
“Keep reading, Dad!”
So I thought I’d best leave this old journal of mine to you, Aidan. It has been a long journey for me, and if my hunch is right, you’re going to need a lot of what I discovered along the way. You might even be able to figure out some of the riddles I came across. At the very least, use the journal to convince your stubborn parents that The Realm is real. King Eliam has a heart for them. They just need to wake up and hear his call!
Aidan smirked. His father shrugged. “Okay, so I was stubborn!” he said. “But I came around.”
“So what’s keeping Mom?”
“I don’t know, Aidan. She gives me an odd look every time I open up the scrolls to read. But you know how she is. She’s a math teacher-everything has to be logical for her. If she can’t see it, she won’t believe it.”
“But she’s seen the scrolls, my scars…”
“She can invent explanations for those too easily. No, for her it’s going to take something she can’t rationalize away.” They were quiet for some time, and then Aidan’s dad continued reading from the journal.
The red tassel marks the first journal entry about my adventures in The Realm. I spent almost two years there, as Glimpses reckon time. I suppose you’ve already figured out that time works differently there. I guess I was gone about a month, our time, but anyway I learned a lot while I was there. I discovered that my Glimpse was named Valithor, and from what I learned, he was a formidable warrior. But then again, so was I. In my scrolls I read that Valithor eventually became Sentinel of The Realm! Imagine that! I wonder if you met him while you were there?
Anyhow, read this journal, Aidan. Start at the tassel. You’ll find my adventures, sketches, and notes-even some maps I drew. There’s a lot here that I figured out about The Realm, but much more I haven’t figured out. So get all you can out of it. Study it. Read it to those hardheaded folks of yours. Maybe King Eliam will give you some wisdom beyond what I was able to learn. As I said before, I have a hunch you are going to need all the wisdom you can get. You see, Aidan, I think there will come a time when you will go back to The Realm.
“Go back?!” Aidan blurted out. “But Gwenne said-”
“Shhh!” A
idan’s father said. “There’s more.”
But beware, Aidan. If I’m right and you do go the second time, it won’t be the same way you went before. And it may be that grave challenges await you in The Realm if you return. Take heart, son, and fear no darkness. You are never alone. My love to you and your parents. This is not good-bye-only until later. The Sacred Realm Beyond the Sun waits for me. And at last, I’ll be able to get up out of this old wheelchair once and for all.
Aidan sat back in a daze. “How am I going to go back to The Realm?”
Aidan and his father sat in silence, each busy with his own thoughts. They agreed to take turns reading Grampin’s diary. Mr. Thomas would read it first.
“How am I supposed to focus on anything with all this stuff going on?”
“Stuff? You mean Grampin’s diary?”
“Yeah, that. That and the visions,” Aidan replied.
“You had another one?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what it means.”
Aidan told his father all about the flashback vision he’d had.
“I’ll think about it, Aidan,” Mr. Thomas said. “But it’s late, and you’ve got to get some sleep. School starts tomorrow.”
When Aidan finally laid his head on his pillow, he still had no answers-only questions.
4
THE BLUE-EYED MICROSCOPE
T he rain the night before had left enough moisture to cause a swirling fog to form. The sun, a blotchy pale globe, rose and fought to burn through the drifting orange haze. Feeling like he too was in a fog, Aidan stood alone, waiting at the bus stop.
Things had seemed so clear when he left The Realm. He’d just come back, tell his parents and Robby about his amazing adventures serving King Eliam as a knight, and they’d all just believe. Right. So far, Mom thinks I’m going through a “stage,” and Robby seems to have dropped off the face of the earth! And the only reason Dad believes is because of Grampin.
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