Crystal Doors #1 (15 page)

The Master Sage had explained that before the Great Closure, sages and Keys had occasionally opened new crystal doors, but the knowledge of that magic had been all but lost. Yet somehow, the combination of experiments by Dr. Pierce and Rubicas had apparently managed to do it again. Vic stared at the scrolls, moving from one to another and fidgeting. “Even though Rubicas’s notes are gone, I bet I can figure this out. I’m going to get something to write on.” He scrambled down the stairs to Rubicas’s workroom.

With her distractible cousin gone, Gwen found it easier to concentrate. She paced, envisioning where the pieces would
go. She set out the primary aja crystals and wiped them off with her Ocean Kingdoms sweatshirt to be sure they were clean.

Vic returned with a jug of water, a swatch of parchment, a bottle of sparkling ink, and a polished stylus. “Sheesh, I wasn’t expecting a laptop or a word processor, but it sure is hard to find a pencil and scrap paper in Elantya!”

Gwen looked at him in surprise. “That’s the special aja ink for writing spells! Are you sure Sage Rubicas said that was all right?”

“He wasn’t using it. Besides, we’re trying to write a spell, aren’t we?”

Gwen wasn’t sure about her cousin’s logic, but she didn’t argue with him. “As long as you didn’t interrupt him.”

“He didn’t even see me.” Vic squatted again, used a translation spell, and started to scribble something as he referred to the scrolls.

Gwen placed the empty basin at the center of the platform, then laid down the measuring rod and used a small piece of seashell chalk to mark her lines. She calculated the angles three times, being overly meticulous, and set a dot on the platform at the end of each starburst path where the star aja crystals would rest.

After she had marked the lines, she placed the fist-sized clusters of aja crystals at their endpoints and arranged a web-work of mirrors and lenses and prisms, radiating from the central basin like the streamers in Fourth of July fireworks.

“There, the spell’s done.” Vic held up the parchment on which he had written several lines. “Since I can’t read or write
the ancient language, I just used English. It follows the general pattern of all the other door-opening spells.”

“English isn’t going to work!” Gwen shook her head in disbelief.

“I never said it would. But Lyssandra can write it out in Elantyan and read it for us.”

Gwen went back to measuring her angles again. Vic was impatient with her double-checking and triple-checking. “What’s taking so long? I want to try it.”

Gwen tossed her blond hair and glared up at him. “I’m not stopping you. There’s no chance this spell will work anyway — especially if magic is dependent on good penmanship.”

“Very funny.” He filled the center basin with water from the jug, stepped back, cleared his throat, then read aloud:

“Honoring our good intention,

Take us to a new dimension.

Scroll and spell from ink and pen,

Let us see our home again.

Ground and fire and air and sea,

Make a door where it should be.

Spirit key unlock the door

That we’ve both been looking for.

Crystal door as clear as glass,

Open up and let us pass.”

Seeing her reaction, Vic looked defensive. “What did you expect? More Chaucer?”

Despite her skepticism, Gwen held her breath. Vic waited. They looked at each other. Nothing happened.

Suddenly Gwen let out a laugh, remembering how Vic had chided her in the Cogitary. “So, Dr. Distracto,
now
who forgot to say the magic word?”

“Oh, right — S’ibah!”

The crystals in the array began to glow. Vic let out a cry of both surprise and triumph as he stepped back. The water in the basin bubbled and the air inside the complicated web of crystal lines rippled into a region of blur, like a steamy mirror after one of Vic’s interminable showers. Then a patch at the very center turned as shiny and transparent as a window.

A window to Earth.

Gwen and Vic gasped.

“Uncle Cap!”

“Dad!”

There, at the centerpoint of the array, was an image of Dr. Carlton Pierce in the solarium of their house. He was reaching to adjust a lens in his arrangement when his head whipped around to focus on the new “window.” He seemed to look directly
at
Gwen and Vic.

“I told you he wouldn’t give up! Keep going, Dad — this has to work.” Vic rushed toward the image of his father. “Gwen, come on! Who knows how long this door will last?”

But he passed right through the image of his father. At first he looked surprised, then crestfallen. “It’s not a crystal door after all. Just a… a peephole back home.”

His dad reached toward him. “Vic?”

“Can you hear us, Uncle Cap?” Gwen shouted.

The view sharpened even more, and Dr. Pierce seemed to be standing right in front of them, though he rippled like a heat-distorted image. His face lit with joy. “You’re safe! Both of you made it to Elantya!”

Gwen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You
knew
about this? About Elantya, and the crystal doors?”

“Yes, I was trying to get us all to safety. The three of us were supposed to escape that night — but only you two passed through. There was danger for you here on Earth. Azric already tried to kill Gwen.”

Gwen suddenly felt cold inside, remembering the strange man who had watched so expectantly as the killer whale was driven to its unintentional attack.
“That
was Azric? The guy with the creepy eyes?”

“Azric?” Vic yelped. “He’s the big bad guy, right? The dark sage who killed his parents, then went hunting for his sister? What does he want with us?”

“He was after your mothers, too. He engineered the accident that killed Gwen’s parents, I’m sure of it. And now he’s looking for you.” Uncle Cap seemed frustrated to stay on the other side of the invisible barrier. “But at least you got away. You aren’t safe here on Earth anymore. You’ll have to stay in Elantya where the sages can protect you.”

Gwen was having a very difficult time accepting what he was telling them. She had so many questions it was hard to know where to begin. Then the clarity and focus of the “window” started to fade. “Uncle Cap, what’s going on? Please —”

He cut her off, sensing they were almost out of time. “Vic,
your mother is somewhere in one of the open worlds. When Kyara realized it was Azric who killed Rip and Fyera, she wanted to protect you children, and me, from him. She decided to confront him and escape back through the crystal door, hoping to lead Azric away from us. Her plan succeeded, at least for a while.”

Dr. Pierce’s image wavered, and some of his words were cut off. “— your powers. I’ll keep trying to reach Elantya. Try to learn —” Again his words cut off, and he raised his voice to a shout now, though it sounded like a storm was howling around him. “Vic, find your mother! She may be hiding from Azric, but she —”

His words crackled, and they could barely see him now. The crystals were dimming. “Dad!” Vic shouted. Then the image faded away, leaving only a blur in the air. The basin was dry, and the star aja crystals no longer glowed.

Gwen and Vic stared at each other for a long moment, both speechless, their throats clogged with a thousand questions. Finally Vic said in a hoarse voice, “If we could do that with a spell written in English, imagine what’ll happen when we use the
right
language!”

WHEN THE EXCITED COUSINS rushed back down from the tower into the workroom, even Rubicas reacted to their news with skepticism. “You two should not be able to work magic!” the sage said.

“Much less in a crude language that is not old enough to have developed true power.” Orpheon took the scrap of parchment on which Vic had scrawled his spell. “And you used some of our precious aja ink? For your little… game? You had no training at all.”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” Vic said.

“So you claim.”

Gwen was also growing impatient with Orpheon’s attitude. “We’d be happy to show you again. We left the arrangement in place.”

“Hmm, I fear that would put too much stress on the staraja,”
Rubicas said. “Let the crystals cool and recharge. Leave your apparatus where it is. We have no need of the tower tonight, and tomorrow Orpheon and I will make a point of seeing this miracle.” He stroked his beard, as if reconsidering. “A window, you say? Not an actual crystal door for transport, but something that showed you images of a man —”

“Not just a man. It was my dad!” Vic cried.

“Hmm, perhaps a window would not violate the strictures of the Great Closure. I must think on this further.”

“Later,
Master Rubicas,” Orpheon said sternly. “We have work to do.”

Vic was clearly disappointed that they would have to wait. Because of Uncle Cap’s warning about Azric, they knew they couldn’t go home, but Gwen and Vic both very much wanted to bring his father here. If they couldn’t be together on Earth, then at least they should all be safe in Elantya.

Sunset had already started to color the sky orange and pink, and Orpheon lit one of the crystals to illuminate the workroom. “All right, then — tomorrow it is,” Gwen said. “And our friends can be there, too.”

THE NEXT DAY. WHEN they all returned to the sage’s tower, Lyssandra and Sharif admired the ingenuity and resourcefulness the cousins had shown, not only in discovering the scroll variations and the medallion symbol in the Cogitary, but in asking Vir Questas to let them borrow his star aja crystals.

“The power of persistence,” Gwen said, anxiously studying
the arrangement of the crystals, prisms, lenses, and basin that had remained in place all night. She had measured everything so carefully yesterday, and today she had made sure that the basin was full to the very brim with water. But for some reason, the array didn’t look quite right, though each crystal was on its mark. Gwen stopped herself from measuring everything again. Vic would complain that she was being obsessive compulsive.

Vic stood very close to Lyssandra while she studied the new door-opening spell. He had already read her the spell aloud while she copied it down in Elantyan. She said, “I refined these phrases. I only know a few words of Ylijan, but I sprinkled them in with the Elantyan. I believe that will help.” The telepathic girl smiled. “If everything is correct, the spell should work better than it did yesterday.”

Gwen hoped that using the proper languages would be enough to open a door for Uncle Cap, rather than just letting them see each other.

Rubicas and his assistant glanced over the scroll in Lyssandra’s hand, at the clear crystalline ink that graced the paper like fine trails laid down by flitting moths above each line of Vic’s messy writing.

Orpheon did not seem impressed. “Very well, let us try it so the sage and I can get back to work. The defense of Elantya is far more important.”

Sharif sat down and crossed his arms on his chest, as if all this activity were highly entertaining. He balanced the crystal ball containing his djinni companion on his shoulder like a pirate’s parrot. The sphere gave off a faint aqua glow, and Pirigazed
through her curved walls, watching with curiosity and interest as the experiment progressed.

Rubicas indicated the arrangement of crystals. “You have measured the angles, the lengths for the whole array based on the crystal size?”

“Several times.” Gwen lifted her chin with pride.

“More than several,” Vic muttered. “Try about a thousand.”

Lyssandra held up the scrap of parchment. “I am ready.” Without further delay, the petite girl spoke the spell.

As her lyrical words emerged, the crystals in the array began to shimmer. Beautiful colors gleamed brighter, shifting in tone and hue. Lyssandra kept reading. She glanced up, seeing the crystals flash between the mirrors, ricocheting off prisms, as the water bubbled. She continued in a louder voice and finished the spell. The crystals grew more and more luminous.

Piri’s sphere shone brighter, as if in response.

Gwen’s throat was dry with anticipation. Next to her, Vic didn’t blink; he didn’t even seem to be breathing.

A shimmer appeared in the air at the center of the array, as before. But it looked larger, more than just a window to see Earth, much more… Before the doorway could sharpen entirely, the glow from the points of the crystal pattern grew incandescent. Water geysered from the basin, refogging the clear area and blotting out the image.

“Uh, what’s happening?” Vic cried. “That shouldn’t be —”

Still the crystals burned brighter. And
brighter.
The nymph djinni covered her eyes and tried to shield herself with her own white light.

The center of the array faded to the disappointing clarity of mere air again. Three of the aja crystals went dim like a flashlight shut off, but two glowed even more intensely. The blazing colors hurt Gwen’s eyes as they sparkled from the prisms, intensified by the lenses, growing and growing.