Austin Lively, now trapped in a cursed Menarian cave by Curtin’s yeti-beast, is yanked to Orozgo’s mansion—only to escape and hunt Slick in Happytown’s Horror Mansion, where Riley reveals their parents’ Illuminati ties. Killing Slick with a dragon prop ambush, they flee with Another Kingdom, but Os’s talisman glows red as they drive to L.A., reading the manuscript while questioning sanity—all while Curtin’s monsters and Orozgo’s men close in. The book’s power may unlock salvation, but the real battle is survival. [Automatically generated summary]
You're about to hear the second season of my fantasy suspense story, Another Kingdom, performed by Michael Knowles.
I think you're going to love it.
Be sure to head over to DailyWire.com to get early access to our episodes.
In our last episode, Austin did battle with the assassins, Slick and Moses, killing Moses and taking out Slick's eye.
He then arranged a meeting with Serge Orozgo himself.
He confirmed that it was the wizard Curtin who visited Orozgo in his dacha decades ago and who now haunts his dreams.
Austin explained that only he can defeat Curtin by alerting Emperor Anastasius of the Eleven Lands, which he'll only do if Orozgo will stop trying to kill him.
Orozgo said he would make his decision before Austin reached his car.
But as Austin started the long walk, he passed suddenly back into Menaria where the Roman guards were charging at him.
And now, the season finale of Another Kingdom, performed by Michael Knowles.
I was so surprised I screamed out loud, but my scream was washed away by the battle cries of the onrushing army at my back.
That's the thing about the world, you know?
Reality is very immersive.
When you're in it, you forget there's anything else.
I had been so involved in bargaining for my life with Orozgo, I had forgotten that my life was seconds away from ending in Menaria, near the throne room of King Cambitis, the not altogether wise.
But that's all I had left now.
Seconds.
Looking over my shoulder as I fled, I saw the soldier horde was maybe 15 yards away from me and coming on full speed.
The wedge of their bristling spear points filled my vision.
The edges of their lifted swords glinted in the light of the risen moon.
And then there was no more room to run.
I was at the foot of the marble throne, my progress blocked, the marble image of King Cambitis looking down on me from above.
I turned around and faced the army.
I had made no plan for this moment.
I had been too distracted trying to stay alive in real life to figure out how I was going to stay alive in another kingdom.
So I did the only thing I could.
I reached for my sword.
Not much hope there against such a multitude, but it was the only hope I had.
For a moment, my hand remained empty.
I remembered how the sword had stopped appearing in Curtin's mansion, and my heart sank at the thought that maybe his curse was still in place.
But no, the next second, the weapon flowed out of nothingness into being as my fingers curled around the hilt.
The lead soldier, a centurion, reached me.
His own sword was held high and descending swiftly toward my head.
His bearded face was twisted with warrior rage.
I drew my blade and slashed at his to block it.
He grunted in surprise as the two swords clashed together inches above my brow.
At the same moment, the flowing mercury of my magic armor poured out of my skin and covered me, top to toe.
I knew it would not protect me long against so many spear points, but what could I do besides fight on to the very end?
And yet, amazingly, astounding, there was no need.
Immediately, the entire army stopped in its tracks, as if they had turned to marble again.
The centurion and I were nose to nose, our swords locked together in mid-air, so that close up, I saw his expression change completely.
As my magic helmet surrounded my head, I saw him staring at me, bright-eyed, open-mouthed.
I sensed, then shifted my gaze and saw the rest of the army frozen in their tracks, staring the same way.
For another half second, the centurion's sword and mine pushed against each other.
Then the pressure released as he stepped back and lowered his blade.
The rest of the soldiers lowered their weapons too.
I scanned their dumbstruck faces, dumbstruck.
Then the centurion said, The sword of Queen Alinda, her armor.
Still bewildered, I managed to nod.
Uh, yeah.
And a new voice, a deep, booming voice, came from behind me.
Then you must be her chosen one.
I spun around to see the king.
King Cambitus suddenly made flesh and blood as the moonlight washed over him.
He was stepping down from his high throne.
One of his attendants, now also come to life, took hold of his hand to keep him steady.
The king came toward me, lit red on one side of his face by the glow from the throne room braziers and white on the other by the moonlight.
He was a large man, taller than me by a head, broader at the shoulders, big and vital across the chest.
He had a great black beard that covered much of his face.
But even so, I could see again that his features were familiar to me in some way.
Beneath his golden crown, around the eyes and nose, he reminded me of someone.
I couldn't think who.
He towered above me majestically.
Speak, boy, he commanded.
Answer me.
Are you the one?
Now you have to understand, I did not know what the right answer was.
I did not know whom to trust.
I had faced nothing but witchcraft and deception since I'd left Galeana, and nothing but killers and dirty cops back home.
I didn't know what to say that would keep me alive, so I took the simplest path.
I told the truth.
I am.
Yes.
The queen chose me, sent me.
And then it occurred to me to add, let wisdom reign.
The king frowned deeply.
His eyes narrowed.
What a look.
Was he enraged?
Was he about to command his soldiers to destroy me?
I remembered what they called him, the not altogether wise.
Maybe my crack about wisdom reigning had insulted him.
I held my breath, waiting for his response.
He lifted his gaze over me and looked out at his army.
Let wisdom reign, he thundered at them.
And all together, the soldiers smacked their fists to their breastplates in salute and called back to him with a single voice, and each man go his way.
I could have wept.
I almost did.
I had been so utterly alone for days, so utterly friendless.
Had I really, finally come among friends?
My lips trembling, my voice shook as I lifted my damp eyes to the king and said, You're of the queen's party then.
The kingly frown cleared like summer showers.
He broke into a broad grin behind the large black beard.
He clapped his hand on my shoulder.
I'm her father, lad, he said.
I started, stared.
Her father, hot, damn!
No wonder he looked familiar.
Do you have the talisman? He asked me.
I slid my sword back into its scabbard.
Sword, scabbard, and armor all melted back into nothing.
I reached to the front of my shirt and parted it at the collar to show him the talisman hung around my neck.
I could feel it throbbing there, and I remembered how the power of Anastasius had come through it to lead me to this city, to these friends.
Still grinning, Cambitis nodded.
He glanced imperiously at one of his attendants.
Fetch him furs.
He'll need them.
Then, looking at me again, he said, Let us walk together.
At once, the soldiers parted to let us pass.
They struck their breastplates in salute again, and I realized they were saluting me.
Me, because I was Queen Ilinda's chosen.
So much relief and even joy filled me, I thought my feet would leave the earth.
The king and I crossed the courtyard side by side.
The courtyard was alive with movement now, soldiers and noblemen banging their breastplates or fingering the folds of their robes as they bowed to us.
Looking out beyond the fluted columns of the gallery up ahead, I saw the entire square below, as well as the nearby streets, had become busy in the moonlight.
Men gripping scrolls hurrying urgently, girls carrying baskets, housewives sweeping doorways, workmen pushing barrows, donkeys pulling carts, butchers driving cows, and citizens who bore the marks of rank gathered in small groups to argue, gossip, and chat.
The eerie silence of the city had been replaced with a clatter of motion and a buzz of human voices.
As Cambitis and I kept walking, a detachment of soldiers fell in around us, a security detail clearing our path.
I wish you could stay among us, the king said.
But your mission is an urgent one.
You must return to your journey right away.
My spirits fell at that.
I would have liked to stay among friends for a while, but I nodded bravely, or what I hoped was bravely.
King Cambitus slapped my back.
We must help you while we live, he said.
King Cambitus Slaps My Back00:10:43
Yeah, I said.
This statue thing.
What is that?
Some kind of curse or something?
His Majesty nodded majestically.
Curtain.
In this city, we live only in the light of the moon.
How'd that happen?
He sighed a great sigh.
I was not altogether wise, he said.
I noticed.
The inscriptions, I mean.
Hmm.
I had them done myself.
To remind me.
I was called King Cambitis the Wise before Curtin came, and had I not been at least somewhat wise, the country would be his completely, moonlit or no.
We emerged onto the gallery, walked along the columns toward the zigzagging flights of marble stairs.
A slavish attendant ran up beside us, carrying an armload of heavy fur-lined robes.
Your furs, your majesty, he said breathlessly, offering them to the king.
Cambitis brushed him off with a regal wave of his hand.
The attendant was forced to run along beside us, stumbling under the weight of his burden.
Curtin was once first advisor to the Emperor Anastasius, King Cambitis said.
Yeah, I heard the story.
Anastasius gave Galliana to your daughter when they became engaged, and Curtin felt slighted and wanted revenge.
He gained his first foothold in Egemont.
The people there are legendary for their greed and cowardice and stupidity.
He gave a grim smile.
We even have an old saying, the truth is the truth even in Edgamont, where there is no honest man to speak it.
Yeah, where I come from, they have that saying about Hollywood.
Curtin's thirst for vengeance will not be satisfied until he is ruler of all the eleven lands, Cambitis went on.
Then he can amass the armies he needs to crush the forces of the emperor.
So far, only one thing stands in his way.
What's that?
His Majesty seemed to grow greater as he drew a great breath.
Me, he said.
Me and the land of Menaria.
We started down the broad stairway together.
The protective soldiers marched before us.
The poor toady, with his armload of furs, stumbled and tripped behind.
As we went, the king gave me a brief lesson in fantasy land geography.
Apparently, Anastasius' empire was a federation of eleven kingdoms.
The twelfth kingdom, Galeana, was an independent ally, as powerful as all the rest put together.
This kingdom, Menaria, with its capital city of Vagos, was a long, narrow land that all but divided Galliana and Edgemund from the other ten lands, except for narrow corridors to the north and south.
Because of that, it had served as a natural barrier to Curtin's conquests, and he had been looking for a way to take it over.
He tried to corrupt the people, but they were loyal to their king, Cambytis said.
So he tried to corrupt the king himself, I guessed.
Cambytis nodded.
Curtin can terrify and seduce, and sometimes even sicken, but he cannot strike on his own.
Even his monsters are made of men.
I know, I said.
I killed one of them back in Edgemond.
Two of the soldiers leading us overheard that.
They turned to glance back at me, plainly surprised and impressed.
The king eyed me narrowly.
The beast of sacrifice? he asked.
The late lamented beast of sacrifice, yeah, I said.
I cut the bastard to pieces.
Cambytis answered nothing, but he clapped his hand on my shoulder again as we descended the stairs.
And I, who was feeling a bit short of paternal support at the moment, was deeply moved by this gesture of fatherly approval.
We came down into the great square, and there was my black stallion waiting for me by the water trough.
Is this your mount? The king asked.
A noble Gallianan beast.
One of Toratanio's, no doubt.
They have his magic in them.
To the toady stumbling and reeling under his pile of furs, he said, Pack the creature with supplies and bring him to the end of Twilight Road.
The toady said something along the lines of, Yes, Your Majesty, but he was gasping for breath at that point, and it was hard to make out his words.
The king and I walked on across the square.
As we went, the men in the square stopped their business and bowed to him.
The women dropped him curtsies.
The gestures of respect seemed to me heartfelt, but not obsequious.
It was clear that here in the royal city of Vagos, Cambytis inspired admiration, but not awe.
The king glanced neither right nor left, but merely acknowledged his people with a raised hand and went on speaking to me.
Curtin laid siege to my mind, he said, hoping to win me over as he had won Lord Iron.
He gave a slight shudder, remembering.
It went on for months.
It was like a fever.
I never knew who would act as his agent next.
I never knew whom to trust, or even sometimes what was real and what was a dream or an illusion.
Some men offered me treasure.
Some outlined plans to extend my dominion, and some, some women, offered me pleasures of the flesh.
But I was wise.
I was King Cambitis the wise, he went on, wistfully, I thought.
And I refused them all and kept my people free.
Let wisdom reign, I thought, and each man go his way.
Clearly, the two things went together.
Even when the wizard sent a poet to immortalize me, I kept my head and hardened my heart and ruled justly, the king went on.
I knew my country was the barrier between Curtin and the rest of the eleven lands, the defense of Anastasius' empire, soon to be my daughter's empire too, and so I held to wisdom for the good of all.
We neared the far end of the square, the place where I had entered.
There were people leaning out of windows here, men and women in the apartments and offices above us, waving down at the king and calling to him.
Hail, King Cambitus, the not altogether wise.
He waved back to them and smiled, and they smiled.
And I, watching the exchange, thought again of my mother's snarky response to the queen's slogan.
What's wisdom, I wonder?
Well, she was right.
Obviously, that was the big question, wasn't it?
If you knew what was happening in Galeana, I asked the king, why didn't you send someone to Anastasius yourself?
He's your future son-in-law, right?
Wouldn't he have listened to you?
He would have, and I did, more than once.
But Curtin was already at work in the other lands, moving to them from beyond our borders north and south.
And my messengers did not have the talisman to guide them.
Either they never reached the emperor, or they never returned.
I nodded, feeling a twist of anxiety in my stomach as I remembered that I too might never reach my destination.
For one thing, Orozgo might have me gunned down before I even reached my car.
Then what would happen to Galiana and the queen?
I wondered, had I been altogether wise?
We had left the square.
We passed beneath the triumphal arch and headed down a street between two rows of buildings.
The city's white walls were a glow with moonshine, the glow interrupted at intervals by the yellow candle-lit rectangles of the windows.
The windows were filled with the subjects of the king, their faces flickering in the flamelight.
They waved and smiled.
When I looked over my shoulder, I saw a whole crowd of people was following us now, just sort of trailing after us because we were who we were, I guess.
The king and his friend, celebrities.
I looked up at the king again.
The curse, the moon curse, I said.
Curtain must have gotten to you somehow.
How'd he manage it?
As Cambitus had seemed to grow greater when he drew a breath with pride, so now he seemed to deflate and grow smaller after a long sigh.
He said, The devil!
He went into my mind somehow and found the love I dreamed of there.
The lady I had invented, you know, to think about before I went to sleep, to give me comfort in the lonely night.
He made an image of her out of moonlight, and I fell.
He glanced at me and went on defensively.
To be fair, she did seem beautiful, and good, and true, the very image of the queen I had imagined.
What about Elinda's mother?
Where was she?
Ah, gone, long gone.
She died many years ago.
I had been alone since then.
That was part of it.
I had been alone for a long time with only my dream.
And then, then to see my dream in the woods outside the city, to meet her there, my dream made real, whenever the moon would rise.
Well, she ensorceled me.
He, Curtin, ensorceled me through her.
What a scumball he is, I said.
And when he, and a couple of the soldiers, stole a glance my way, I added, Well, it doesn't seem fair somehow to get at you that way.
He laughed once.
Fair.
Well, you know what I'm saying.
Curtin created someone who seemed worthy of your love, and you loved her.
I don't see why that should give him power over your mind.
Neither did I, unfortunately.
I had done no wrong in loving what I loved, her beauty and her goodness and her truth.
But they were not real.
They were made of moonlight, and they faded with the moon.
I loved the thought of them in myself and saw them in her, as he knew I would after my years of lonesome longing.
I was not, it turned out, altogether wise.
Once she had me in her power, he had me in his.
What did she do to you?
She did what Curtin's other agents couldn't do.
She corrupted me.
Slowly, always under the guise of her goodness and with rationales that sounded like the truth, she led me to all the evils I had resisted until then.
She taught me to wield tyrannical power over my people, in the name of doing them good, to confiscate their money and property, in the name of doing them good, to luxuriate in the praise of poets, also in the name of the good.
Foggy Steps Through Mountains00:15:05
I realized what was happening, but too late.
I had become weak enough for Curtin to put his curse on me.
Me and the people who followed me.
And curse us is what he did.
A halfway curse, it's true.
He is still slowed in his attempts to conquer the Eleven Lands, because he cannot move freely through Menaria when the moon is high.
But he moves when he moves, and he does what he can.
And if you do not reach Anastasius with the talisman, we will all be Galliana soon and Edgarmund, all Curtin's slaves.
We'll get back to the story in a minute.
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We walked on, past several intersections, and at every street we passed, new people joined the parade behind us.
At last, we were leading a massive throng, crushed together between the buildings, a human tide.
The soldiers surrounded us and made a space for us, but the mob pressed close.
Their voices echoed off the walls and filled the air with a pleasant sound, as if of celebration.
It felt like Mardi Gras.
Now, up ahead of us, not far off, I saw where the street ended.
The city itself ended and opened on the moonlit field beyond.
I remembered seeing the workers out there in their orchards and farms.
I said, The curse only affected the city.
The people in the country still move by day, right?
The great bearded head nodded.
Only the people of Vagos have to live by the moon.
The country people follow their own ways, the old ways.
They're loyal to me, but they don't really know me.
It's the traditions they know, and they put my face on them.
He laughed sadly.
They were lucky.
They followed the king as they imagined him to be.
A king who is wiser than the king as he is.
As we came to the city wall, the toady who had been following us before reappeared.
He was holding my black stallion by the reins now.
He had packed the furs onto the stallion's back, behind the saddle.
The king and I reached the end of the road, the end of the city.
The toady, still breathless, bowed his head and handed me the stallion's reins.
I took them with thanks.
The furs are for me, I asked the king.
And food and water as well.
You'll need them to cross the white mountains.
You must take the narrow pass through to the meadowlands of Khor.
It's rough going, but the talisman will guide you.
All right.
Is that the only way?
It's the fastest, though it's not fast, and the safest, though it's not safe.
The other passages are beyond our borders, and Curtin has more power there.
His monsters haunt those places, and so does he.
I nodded.
I sighed.
I did not want to chance an encounter with another beast like the beast of sacrifice.
Over the white mountains I would go.
Well, I said.
One more time, Cambitus laid his hand upon my shoulder.
I felt again the warmth of his fatherly approval, the fatherly approval that was missing from my own life, my real life.
The king looked down at me from his greater height, and his eyes were kind and sad.
Do you know my daughter? He asked me.
I shook my head.
Not really.
I saw her once, a few days ago, on the street, in another kingdom, where I'm from.
This Hollywood you spoke of.
Yes.
A foolish place, you say.
Don't get me started.
But she was alive.
She was well.
As far as I could tell, yeah.
She's on the run.
She's hiding out.
But she's alive and well.
And she chose you to come here, to fight for her.
I guess so.
I don't know, really.
I read some of her book.
Just a little, but it did something to me.
It made me able to come here somehow.
It put me on this quest.
The king considered this with great seriousness.
Then he took his hand from my shoulder and gestured toward my horse.
Time to go.
I took hold of the pommel and swung myself into the saddle.
I looked down at the king and at his people, too, all the people, the large mass of them who had followed us out of the city and were now gathered to see me off in the moonlight.
The sight of them squeezed my heart somehow.
The first friends I had had in days.
I was sorry to leave them so soon.
The king saw the expression on my face.
He grinned again, his teeth moon white behind his black beard.
She is a great woman, my daughter, he said.
Wholly wise, far wiser than her father ever was.
If her book changed you, you must have some wisdom in you, too.
I guess I must, I said, but it's news to me.
He reached up toward me.
I clasped his hand.
A king's hand, I thought, impressed.
He gripped mine tightly.
Let it reign, he said.
Let the wisdom reign.
And then, much to my surprise and embarrassment, a powerful wave of emotion washed over me, a powerful wave of loneliness and confusion and mourning.
I felt oh so fatherless and oh so lost.
I don't even know what it is, I cried out to the king, my voice breaking.
I don't even know what wisdom is.
Still clasping my hand, King Cambitus straightened, surprised.
Wisdom, he said, as if it was obvious to anyone.
Wisdom is to love the good.
I blinked back tears.
Really?
That's it?
That's all?
That's it.
That's all.
To love the good, the greater good more than the lesser.
Well, I said, trying to recover some dignity.
All right, then.
All right.
That's something.
Great.
I've been wondering, you know.
Someone asked me once, and I was just wondering.
The king smiled again and shook my hand and let me go.
The people gathered around him, waving at me and cheering.
Let wisdom reign.
I waved back.
And each man go his way, I called to them.
I turned my stallion toward the silver dark.
My heart was strangely full.
I heard the cheering voices at my back as I began to ride away from them.
Wisdom, I thought to myself.
Wisdom is to love the good, the greater good more than the lesser.
That's it.
That's all.
And for a few more of the stallion's steps, these words uplifted me and made me feel stronger inside.
But it was only for a few steps, a few steps and no more, because after that, a voice seemed to whisper in my ear, a soft, dry, hissy, loveless voice.
My mother's voice.
Suddenly, with a little cry of dismay, I reined the stallion and brought his head around.
I faced back toward the glowing white city, back to where the waving, cheering people surrounded their monarch.
But your Majesty, I called to him, what is the good?
In answer, the great king extended his arms to either side of him, threw back his head and laughed, laughed long and loud with a kind of jolly nobility.
Don't ask me, lad, he shouted back.
I'm not altogether wise.
Oh, terrific, I thought.
I turned my horse toward the moon again and rode for the mountains.
I rode slowly through the night, sleeping in the saddle sometimes.
As dawn came up, the mountains came into view, a jagged graft line behind a pale white curtain of mist.
I touched the talisman around my neck.
I felt the heat and life radiating out of it and into my fingers.
I felt the call of Anastasius in my chest.
I adjusted my direction slightly and rode on.
By noon, the white range loomed above me, imposing, snow-covered.
I brought the black stallion to a halt and peered into the distance.
I could see the road narrow to a dirt trail that rose up the nearest slope, snaking through the pines that sprinkled the base.
The pines died out around a third of the way up.
If the trail continued beyond that, I couldn't see it.
My heart darkened at the intimidating sight, but it darkened even more a moment later, because a moment later, I tried to nudge the stallion forward with my boot heels, and he didn't respond.
He didn't move.
He huffed once, steam bursting from his nostrils, but he just stood there, still.
The moment it happened, I knew what it meant.
All the same I tried again, spurring him harder.
But it made no difference as I had known it wouldn't.
The stallion wouldn't budge.
This was the end of the journey for him.
He would go no further.
Really? I said.
Come on.
It wasn't the prospect of climbing on foot that made me so depressed.
It was the prospect of going on alone.
I said I had had no friends until I came into the Menarian capital of Vagos.
But that wasn't quite right, was it?
The stallion had been my companion all this way.
He had always been there when I needed him.
No matter where I left him, no matter what I got myself into, he had guessed my movements before I even knew what they would be, and he had met me at the spot where I emerged.
My throat felt tight as I swung myself off him, and I lit on the ground by his flank.
I gave his breathing hide a gentle pat.
All right, I said.
Then, reluctantly, mournfully, I unloaded the furs from his back.
I dressed myself in one of them and made a sack of another.
I could feel the snowy wind coming down off the mountain's height.
I pulled the fur hood over my head and clasped the collar closed at my throat.
I tied up my food and water in the sack and slung it over my shoulder.
For a long while then I stood beside the horse's head and looked up the slope, full of misgiving.
Finally, I turned toward the stallion.
I looked into his big, contemplative eyes.
Well, listen, I began.
The black beast simply turned and started walking back the way we had come together.
Well, what did I expect?
Mutual vows of eternal friendship?
A promise he'd drop me an email from time to time?
It's funny how you come to love animals.
You never know if they care, if they love you back, or what love could even mean to them.
Maybe you just love some character you've imagined for them, your own ideas superimposed on them, the way King Cambitis loved his moon maiden and the country people loved their king.
But all the same, I loved the stallion.
I watched him walking, then trotting away, growing smaller as he crossed the fields of Menaria, heading west toward Edimond and Galeana and Shadow Wood, his true home.
On an impulse, I called out to him.
Tell Maud I'm still here.
Tell her I will not fail her.
But if the horse understood me or even heard me, he gave no sign of it.
What did I expect?
I stood and watched him until he was nothing more than a dot moving against the blue horizon.
Then I turned and started trudging up the mountain.
It was a miserable trek from the very beginning, and it slowly got worse.
The trail began as a brown dirt line in a dusting of snow.
Within half an hour, it was a mere indentation in a white blanket.
The icy crust was hard, but now and then I broke through and sank to my shins so that my boots grew soggy and my feet were freezing cold.
The weather began to deteriorate.
A heavy fog moved in and melded with the clouds.
The clouds sank lower, grew darker.
The wind rose.
It started to snow.
Soon I could barely see where to direct my steps.
Uncertain, I reached inside my fur to touch the talisman.
I had to open up the collar of my coat to do it.
The icy air rushed in on me, bitter and biting against the flesh of my throat and chest.
I gripped the medallion, felt its warmth.
Its power put me on track again for a little while, but only a little.
Within a few steps, I was lost once more as the snowfall grew heavier, the fog thicker, and the wind stronger still.
I climbed.
The way grew steep and rocky.
The furs felt heavy on my back.
I grew hollow and weak.
I knew I should eat, but I was too cold and unhappy to stop and take the time.
I went on through the wind-whipped white.
Now, horribly, I began to catch glimpses of motion in the storm.
Not just the blowing snow, not just the dipping shadows of branches, but other things.
Half-seen shadows of half-seen creatures.
Moving, darting, lumbering.
They were following me, surrounding me, watching me, gauging.
What was I?
Was I dangerous?
Was I edible?
How should they attack, and when?
I got a clear look at one of them.
It was not a reassuring sight.
As I was trudging up the slope, using every mental trick I knew to forget my exhaustion and ignore my fear, I heard a branch snap, loud, like a gunshot, not far away.
It sounded like a big branch.
Whatever snapped it must have been large and heavy.
I stopped in my tracks.
I panned my gaze across the scene, peering through the blowing snow and the shrouding fog and the mist of my own breath.
Nothing moved in the depths of the obscurity.
I waited, watching.
Still nothing.
I convinced myself there was some other explanation for the noise.
The wind breaking a branch off a tree, something like that.
I faced forward, ready to start on my way again.
And at that moment, the wind strengthened, the fog thinned.
There it was, right in front of me.
Something like a monkey, but bigger than a man, but white and furry, almost like a sheep, but fanged and clawed and snarling.
Its eyes glowed red.
A noise broke out of me.
A pathetic animal noise, the noise that prey makes in the face of the predator.
My hand fumbled frantically in my fur, trying to get to my belt to reach for my sword.
But before I could, the creature darted away with a leopard's astounding speed.
There was a streak of white in the white, and it had vanished into the storm.
I stood there, panting hard, trembling, staring this way and that.
I waited, dry-mouthed, expecting the Yeti to burst, raging out of the miasma and take me down.
But it was quiet on every side.
At last, I clutched my fur tighter around me and climbed on.
The sparse forest was growing sparser now.
I sensed I was nearing the tree line, but it was harder and harder to see my way.
The Fog Tightened Around Me00:06:42
The fog tightened around me like a great cloudy fist.
The snow seemed a solid streak of motion, close and cold as my own skin.
After a while, I felt everything growing weirdly vague and distant.
It took me a few minutes to realize.
Night was falling.
Soon it would be dark.
And they were out there again, the beasts.
Or maybe it was just the one beast, that one fanged, woolly gorilla with its dagger claws and its red eyes.
It moved so quickly.
It was here, then there.
I couldn't tell if it was alone or with its tribe.
Under the noise of the wind, I heard it huff and grumble.
I kept telling myself it was just my imagination.
It was not my imagination.
It was real.
It was out there.
It was hunting me.
One more time, I braved the cold and opened my collar and touched the talisman.
It was hot.
Its force was strong.
I adjusted my trajectory according to the pull of its power.
I pushed on with renewed energy.
The incline seemed brutally steep now.
The sack on my back felt as if it were full of lead.
The snow-wet wind was harsh on the crescence of flesh beneath my eyes, the spaces exposed between my pulled-up collar and my pulled-down hood.
I felt my legs were going to give way under me, but I pushed up and on.
I peered harder through the gloom.
There, something...
What?
Some darkness in the whirling white.
It grew blacker and clearer with every step I took.
A last effort, and I was there.
It was an archway in the rock, the entrance to a cave.
I charged in eagerly.
At once, the walls cut off the wind.
The sudden quiet and the respite from the battering cold was such a great relief, I groaned aloud with pleasure.
I stripped the sack off my shoulder and let it drop wetly to the cave floor.
What a joy to let go of that weight.
I stood there, breathing, wallowing in the relative warmth, the relative silence after the storm's freezing roar.
I tried to get my bearings now.
I peered into the blackness ahead of me.
As I did, I sensed, then saw, a faint orange glow.
I looked down and discovered a preternatural light was shining out of my fur.
I opened the collar and the light shone brighter.
The talisman was giving off a flame-like red energy.
I fumbled the medallion out of the folds of the fur and held it up to illuminate the cave.
It was only a small alcove.
The rough gray surface of the rear wall was just a few yards ahead of me.
All the same, I thought, it was deep enough to keep me out of the weather.
I could make camp here.
I could bundle the furs around me and sleep through the night and hope the storm would be gone by morning.
I took a step forward and then stopped.
I gaped at what I saw in the eerie red glow from the talisman.
There, set on the ground against the rear wall of the cave, was a pile of bones.
Rib cages, limbs, and the strange, unnameable skulls of strange, unnamable beasts.
They were stripped clean, piled high, the skulls staring with empty eye holes.
My brain was dull with weariness, hunger, and cold.
It took me a second or two to make sense of what I saw.
Then I did.
I had come into the lair of a predator, the home of a beast.
And just as I realized that, I heard it behind me.
It huffed and grunted.
I recognized the sound of the yeti that had been stalking me up the slope.
Through the soft of the wind, I could hear it approaching the mouth of the cave.
Another moment and it would block the archway.
Then it would have me cornered.
There was only one thing to do.
I let the talisman drop back against my chest.
I reached quickly into my fur.
My hand went to my belt and I seized the hilt of Elinda's magic sword as it came into being beneath my fingers.
Under my fur, my body was suddenly coated with armor.
The magic helmet grew up around my head.
This was not going to be fun, I thought.
I whipped my weapon free.
Even in the shadows of the stormy darkness, the blade glowed silver.
I bared my teeth.
I let out a battle roar.
I spun and charged through the murky blindness, out into the freezing tempest, and found myself suddenly in Orozgo's mansion, walking through the wood-paneled rooms with the butler-slash-gunman following close behind me.
Well, that was a strange moment.
It really was.
My heart was still thundering with the rush of battle.
My body was still expecting to come face to face with the abominable snowman out in the storm, but my mind was already beginning to comprehend that no, I was here again in Hope Ranch, California, striding past the marble fireplace with Jeeves the assassin hanging back creepily in my blind spot.
Oh, right, right.
I remembered now.
Orozgo was about to decide whether to let me go or kill me.
He was sitting out on the patio, toying with the last of his breakfast berries, trying to calculate whether it was worth it to keep me alive a while longer.
Did I really know where my sister Riley was?
Could I find the book Another Kingdom?
Should he have me followed and snatch the novel from me and give it to Curtin in exchange for his soul?
Or should he let me read the book all the way through so I could return to the Eleven Lands at will and alert the armies of Anastasius?
Then maybe I could defeat Curtin altogether and stave off their reckoning.
Or should he just forget the whole thing and have Jeeves put a gun behind my ear and blow my brains out through my forehead?
We walked through the house, the killer and I.
I could feel the butler's eyes on my neck.
I kept telling myself I was Orozgo's best bet.
If he killed me, he had nothing.
Not the book, not Riley, not Curtin.
Nothing.
That's what I kept telling myself.
But as I reached the front door, I heard a cell phone buzz behind me, and I felt as if my heart had seized up like a dry engine.
I stopped.
I turned slowly.
The butler's eyes and mine locked as he reached inside his jacket and drew out his phone.
He held it to his ear.
He listened.
Very good, sir, he said solemnly.
He slipped the phone back into his jacket and hesitated a moment, hand in his armpit out of sight.
Would he pull his gun, end everything in the next second?
He didn't.
He drew out his hand, empty.
He walked past me to the front door.
He opened the door for me.
Have a nice day, he said.
I realized I had stopped breathing.
I forced myself to start again.
I walked past the butler, out the door, and into a morning that smelled of the sea.
Midnight, Happy Town.
Into the Sea Smell00:04:10
The amusement park was closing.
Stationed just off the freeway across the street, I sat in Riley's passat and watched through the windshield as the people began to file out.
I was wearing a black windbreaker now.
I could feel the weight of Slick's gun in the inside pocket, feel the shape of it pressed against my left side.
Now and then I nervously reached across and touched the hard bulge of the weapon through the jacket's fabric.
Sure enough, it was still there.
On my right side, I had a flashlight clipped to my belt.
Out in the park, the Ferris wheel stopped turning.
The tinkly music died.
The sparkling lights winked out, arc by arc, until the wheel became a great round shadow against the moonlit sky.
The blue and red bulbs on the small roller coaster went dark in sections, the darkness climbing and falling with the loop-de-loop pattern of the tracks.
The crowd, meanwhile, kept pouring through the gates in the surrounding fence, streaming into the grassy dirt parking lot.
Headlights went on and engines started.
Cars began to line up at the exit and putter off down the road.
The carousel went dark.
The horses became silhouettes.
One by one, the lights on the shooting galleries faded and were gone.
The shutdown process continued a long time.
The crowds streamed out.
It seemed a large crowd for midweek.
I reckoned it was the draw of the Halloween rides.
I remembered the billboard outside Walnut Creek advertising the horror walk.
People love that stuff.
I sat and watched.
I drew a long breath, impatient.
Was I certain Riley was hiding in there?
Not as certain as I'd pretended to be when I was having breakfast with Orozgo.
Not as certain as I should have been with my life on the line.
But kind of certain.
Kind of.
They're all around me, Riley had said on the phone.
They can't see me, but they're everywhere.
I figured she had to be hiding somewhere Orozco's people would know to look.
Happytown, where she worked.
But it also had to be somewhere big and complex, a place she knew so well that she could elude them even as they hunted for her.
Also, Happytown.
And there was another clue.
That billboard outside Walnut Creek.
It pictured a woman looking over her shoulder as she stepped into the clutches of a witch.
It was the scene from the movie, wasn't it?
It was the sacrifice scene from Horror Mansion.
Maybe Riley had helped design the attraction this year.
Maybe she hoped I'd figure it out and find her there.
Or maybe she'd just gone there by instinct, haunted by her own haunting past.
In any case, that's where she was.
I was certain of it.
Kind of.
I was kind of certain I was alone here, too, that I had not been followed.
After my breakfast with Orozgo, I had a return to my motel.
I had waited there a full day to make sure no one was watching me.
The next day, I had gone out into the parking lot and checked under the passade for tracking devices.
I had ditched my old burner and gone into town and bought a new one, a smart one this time with an internet browser, though I didn't turn it on.
I had bought yet another outfit, the black windbreaker.
I had waited in stores and coffee shops until evening came.
Then I left town.
I took my time getting on the freeway.
I wove elaborate routes through the hills to make sure there was no one on my trail.
Finally, I headed north again.
Walnut Creek, the park.
I was certain no one was following.
Kind of.
Now I sat and watched.
The crowds continued to file out.
The headlights in the parking lot continued to flash on.
The colored lights and spotlights in the park continued to go dark.
The disc of the tilter work, the cars of the bumper rides.
They all became shadows, gray ghosts in the crowded landscape.
After another 45 minutes or so, Happytown was quiet.
I went on sitting, watching.
I could see the last workers in the moonlight, sweeping up, shutting down.
The final few of them brought bags of trash out and tossed them in dumpsters set at the edge of the parking lot.
More headlights went on.
More cars drove away.
Finally, the park was empty.
No one left, except for Riley.
Or so I thought.
So I hoped.
I got out of the car.
Flashlight Beam Hits Dragon00:14:46
It was easy to see why she had chosen this place to hide in, assuming she had.
There was no security guard, not even a watchdog.
And while the chainlink fence was topped with three rows of barbed wire, it was the work of a few minutes to dig in the dirt at the base of the fence until I could slip under.
Riley would have been able to leave here whenever she wanted.
She would have been able to find food and use restrooms.
During the day, she might even have gotten into costume and mingled with the crowd, unseen.
I rose up from under the fence and dusted myself off and began walking among the deserted attractions.
The dark rides loomed above me on every side, weird, twisted shapes, enormous.
The boarded galleries stood in long lines.
Huge plaster monsters reared and grinned and stared.
It was like being in a field of fossils, hulking beasts that had gone extinct in ancient days and turned to stone.
Their shadows were etched clearly by the autumn moonlight.
They seemed weirdly poised to come alive at any minute.
I walked in the chill silence, searching for the horror walk.
It took a long time to find it.
Then there it was, up ahead, near the fence at the far side of the park.
The entrance to the attraction was a gigantic head of Satan.
It was tall as a house.
The devil's mouth was agape in a hungry, toothy grin.
The mouth was the doorway through which the customers could enter.
I approached it nervously, my eyes flicking this way and that, watching for danger.
I had seen so much real horror at this point, you might have thought I could enter the maw of a make-believe devil pretty calmly.
Not so much, it turned out.
As I came near that huge horned head in the breezy darkness, I grew truly afraid.
I felt my guts go hollow, and I reached again to touch the shape of the gun at my side.
Something in my blood expected Satan to actually swallow me here.
I stared up at the devil's sharp teeth as I walked into the blackness of his mouth.
I waited until I was deep inside before I unclipped my flashlight from my belt.
I turned it on.
The beam immediately struck a gargoyle, a gaping beastie grinning down at me from the wall.
The effect was as if the thing had jumped out of the shadows at me.
Who?
I gasped aloud.
My heart raced.
I shook my head, annoyed by my own cowardice.
But the whole long walk was like that, every step I took.
Every time I swung the flash to light my way, it lit upon something terrifying.
A snarling werewolf, a skeletal zombie, a dragonhead, eyes flashing down at me.
I told myself it was ridiculous to be afraid of these imaginary things.
After all, I had faced them in reality, or I had faced something like them in something like reality.
I had battled monsters in the Eleven Lands, where they might have killed me.
Some of them had tried pretty hard.
Any minute, in fact, I could walk through a door and find myself fighting yet another one of them, the abominable snowman, in the midst of the storm on the side of the White Mountain.
So why should I start and gasp every time the flashlight hit some plastic imitation?
Just as I asked myself that, my flashlight beam hit the green, warty face of a witch, and I started and gasped.
I felt like an idiot.
The witch, a wax dummy, wasn't even all that frightening.
It was a ridiculous cliché, black-robed, black-hatted, standing over a stout black kettle, rubber bats hanging above her beside a pale green phosphorescent moon, wispy ghosts painted on the wall behind her.
All the same, the sudden sight of her had scared me to my toes.
I clutched my chest and felt my heart rabbiting crazily.
Damn it, I said aloud.
I let the flashlight play over the tableau.
There were other figures behind the witch, and these were more mysterious, more frightening.
Cowled acolytes hulking in the deeper darkness.
A gargoyle clutching a plastic dagger in a spindly hand.
The sight chilled me.
It was the movie scene.
Horror mansion.
Same as on the billboard.
I moved my flashlight around some more, exploring the surrounding area.
Ghouls and ogres and zombies stared at me, their eyes glittering as the beam hit them, but none of them moved.
Riley, I called, my voice barely more than a whisper.
Riley!
But there was no answer.
Silence.
Was it possible she wasn't here?
Had I guessed wrong?
Had I misread my sister's clues and signals?
Desperate for inspiration, I shifted the flashlight into my left hand, and my right hand went into my jacket, into my shirt.
I felt for Bethere's locket there, touched the hot metal, gripped it.
Once again, with the force of a crash cut in a movie flashback, I was suddenly in the past, sitting on Riley's bed again with the book in my hand.
Nobody listens.
I was right where I had been the last moment I'd seen myself like this.
I was lifting my eyes from the children's book to look across the room, to see someone there, a face, an image.
I saw it clearly this time.
It shocked me.
It was me.
It was my face, my face from when I was a child.
There was a dresser against Riley's bedroom wall, a dresser with a mirror.
I was looking at my own reflection there.
And I knew that face, that boy.
It was the boy who had led me out of Egemon to Minaria, guided me out of the eunuch zombie cave of female sacrifice, helped me find my way through the horror mansion maze.
It was the same boy.
I stood in the funhouse darkness and sat at the same time on the bed of my memory.
I stared at that face, my face, gaping.
And then, a ghostly voice whispered, Austin.
Horrible creatures leapt out of the darkness at me and vanished again as I spun around, bringing the flashlight's beam in an arc around with me.
My free hand snapped from the locket and sank inside my jacket pocket to grip my gun.
But by the time I finished turning, I had recognized Riley's voice.
All the same, it was a shock to see her standing there, her small figure only an arm's length away.
My little sister.
She was dressed in a witch's costume, a voluminous black robe, a black wig, a conical black hat with a big round rim.
It made her look even smaller than usual, even more like a child than usual, a little girl dressed up for Halloween.
Her round cheeks were sunken and shaded, as if she hadn't eaten for days.
Her pale eyes were big with fear.
Her face was white with it.
It wrung my heart to see her like that.
We stood there for a moment, frozen by the sight of one another, neither of us able to speak.
Then, her voice breaking, she cried out, Boss, and threw herself into my arms.
I held her.
The beam of the flashlight in my hand danced around wildly, catching the grotesque faces staring down at us.
Riley sobbed into my chest.
Her body quaked violently, fluttering against me like a butterfly.
There never was much to her, and what there was was frail.
The stupid witch hat was poking me in the face.
I pulled it off her.
The black wig came with it.
I dropped the rig to the floor.
Her pigtails were pinned up on top of her straw-blonde hair.
I kissed them tenderly.
I patted the back of her head with my free hand.
It's all right, sis.
I got you.
You're safe.
She sobbed and shook.
She felt so small in my arms, just like when she was little.
It was a long time before she grew still against me.
Then she drew back, lifted her eyes.
Her cheeks glistened with tears in the outglow of the flashlight.
Her lips trembled.
I knew you'd come, Auss, she said.
I smiled.
Of course I came.
I brushed a strand of hair off her forehead.
Don't I always?
She nodded.
She sniffled.
She laughed at herself, a desolate laugh.
Then, with a sudden hint of her old mischievous energy, she said, Did you find my clues?
The flip picture?
The movie in the passageways?
I found them.
They were always listening, see?
I knew I wouldn't be able to say anything on the phone, so I'd left them there for you.
Wasn't that smart of me?
It was.
Very smart.
She straightened, proud of herself.
I had forgotten all about that movie, I confessed.
She blinked, surprised.
Did you?
We watched it together.
I shook my head.
We never did.
You watched it with Dad.
He showed it to you.
Dad?
No.
Wait, really?
Wasn't it you?
Think about it, Riley.
Would I ever let you watch a movie like that?
Yeah, but why would dad, why would he show it to me?
I mean, geez, it scared the shit out of me.
It traumatized me for years.
I always thought you and I.
But she fell silent.
She blinked, confused.
She'd blocked the memory, too, same as me.
She'd changed it around, I guess, to keep herself from remembering who our parents really were.
It doesn't matter now, I said.
I'll explain it to you later.
Let's just get out of here.
Do you have the book?
Another kingdom.
Do you have it?
Yes, I hit it over here.
She gestured with her head, pointing deeper into the funhouse.
I nodded.
I aimed the flashlight beam down the horror walk path.
She started off just a step ahead of me, reaching back to hold my hand.
Are you sure no one followed you? she asked.
Pretty sure, but it doesn't matter.
I cut a deal with Orozgo.
For now, at least, he needs me.
Why does he want it so much?
The book.
I read it.
I skimmed it anyway.
It's just some story.
I sighed.
It depends how you read it, I guess.
Like storybook children lost in the woods, we walked hand in hand past paper trees and wax monsters.
We passed a scene of hideous torture, a man writhing on a hook, the point thrust fully through him, spine to belly.
I thought of Riley, hiding in here for days with all these horrors.
It must have been like hiding inside her own mind.
Was it you who sent it to me? Riley asked.
It just showed up at my door one day, wrapped up in brown paper.
There was no return address, just a note.
Keep this safe.
It wasn't me.
No, it was a friend.
She wanted to give it to me, but Orozco was already on my trail.
I think she was hoping I'd see it on your shelf when you called me.
And I did.
But I didn't know what it was.
I think Orozgo's guys may have hacked the call.
They saw it instead of me.
I'll bet that's it.
Richard called me after that.
He told me to give it to him.
He said he would come and pick it up.
But it wasn't him who came.
It was strangers, a white guy and a black guy.
Slick and Moses, right.
That's why I ran.
Richard is part of it, you know.
I think mom and dad are too.
Part of the Illuminati.
Right.
Her crazy video conspiracy theories.
Only it turned out they weren't so crazy, were they?
You're not going to give it to them, are you? she asked.
She turned her big, frightened eyes back on me.
Her tiny hand gripped mine more tightly.
If they want it so badly, they shouldn't have it.
That's what I figured anyway.
You figured right, sis.
I'm not going to give it to them.
I just need to read it through.
Then it'll be in my head.
Then we can burn it and be done.
But won't they come for us?
Probably, eventually.
But for now, like I said, Orozco needs me.
If I can just...
Holy shit!
My flashlight beam had just hit the dragon.
It was the last monster before the funhouse exit.
It was big, really big, big around and tall.
Its head scraped the black ceiling.
And while it wasn't exactly the same creature I had killed back in Edgemond, it was enough of a twin to give me the Scooby-Doobies.
It was basically your ordinary, lizard-like, kill-the-maiden creature from the old chivalric tales, except it was fat and lumpy and ghastly, and colored the same sickly greenish-white as putrid flesh.
It wasn't made of body parts, no, but it was bulky and gooey and distorted enough in form that its outline and the outline of the Edgemond beast of sacrifice were more or less the same.
How had Curtin's dragon creature been transported here, I wondered.
Or maybe the question was, how had my secret fears been transported to Edgemond?
But then, while we were at it, how had Curtin traversed the gap to seduce Orozgo back in Russia all those years ago?
I probably should have listened more closely when the old man was explaining about quantum universes and whatever it was.
Now I could just feel, sense, the uncanny connection between that other kingdom and this one.
Maybe reading the book would explain more.
Scary, isn't it? Riley said, looking up at the dragon with her big eyes.
I nodded, licking my lips.
The way it works.
You come into this pitch-dark space just as you reach the exit.
Then you cross a sensor and it lights up and roars.
All the girls scream, even some of the boys.
I'll bet they do.
Wait here, she said.
You have to be careful.
I keep the sensor turned on at night as an alarm.
She let go of my hand and moved toward the dragon.
I felt a foolish urge to pull her back from the thing, keep her out of its clutches.
God, I hated that thing.
She took a big, careful step as she moved under the beast, lifting her feet high so as to avoid the sensor.
Then she kneeled down directly under its burning eyes.
I held the flashlight beam on her and watched, nervous, crazily afraid the creature would suddenly come to life and snap her head off.
It didn't.
She wrestled up a floorboard at the dragon's feet, reached into the space below, and brought out the stack of pages bound with twine.
I held my breath as I watched her in the flashlight beam.
There it was at last.
Another kingdom.
She carried the manuscript back to me, taking the same big step away from the dragon as she had when she went toward it.
She obviously knew every inch of this funhouse like the back of her hand.
She'd been clever to hide here.
No one could have found her unless she wanted them to.
She stood in front of me now, holding another kingdom against her chest, like a girl carrying books to school.
I couldn't stop staring at the package.
What was in it?
What would happen when I read it?
If a mere glance at the beginning had given me the power to pass between worlds, what would a full reading do to me?
What would happen after that?
Boss, you with me? Riley said.
Her voice brought me back to myself.
I straightened, my eyelids fluttering.
Providence And Private Clues00:15:25
Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.
We should go, said my sister.
They lock this exit, but we can get out the front way, the way you came in.
Yeah, I said vaguely.
Sure.
Let's go.
She started past me.
I took a deep breath, rousing myself.
Right.
I pivoted around to follow her, bringing the flashlight beam around as I turned.
Riley's shrieking scream filled the shadows as she stopped short.
Terror turned my blood to ice.
I had become so accustomed to the grotesque and hideous faces springing out of the darkness at me that it was a long second before I realized that this grotesque was real.
Its features were twisted.
Its mouth was a corkscrew snarl.
Its teeth were bared.
One eye socket was horribly gutted and purple and webbed with fresh scars.
For a moment, my brain simply could not take in the impossible.
Then it did, and I whispered, Slick!
In the movies, he would have made some speech.
He would have expounded on his plans and rigged up some terrible, long-form death that would have given us a chance to escape at the last second.
But this wasn't the movies.
All he did was level his 45 at little Riley's head as she stood clutching the book to her chest.
Her scream dwindled to a frightened pant.
Slick's twisted grin got twistier.
His one remaining eye seemed to pulse in his head like a living blob.
He said, That's what I came for, bitch, and he pulled the trigger.
What mighty force of mine set me into motion between his first word and his last?
I'll never know.
It felt as if time slowed down while my body turned to a streak of fire.
I hurled myself at Riley and carried her into the shadows as the gunshot exploded, a blast so loud it seemed to erase the world.
I left my feet, carrying my sister with me through the air.
The flashlight fell from my hand and hit the floor and went out.
The funhouse was plunged into blackness so complete that with my ears deaf from the gunshot and my eyes blind, I felt as if I were whirling, lost, through infinite space.
Then the two of us, Riley and I, crashed to the floor and were thrown apart by the impact.
At the thick, thudding sound we made, Slick fired again in our direction.
The flame from his gun barrel was an obscene, red-hot tongue in the darkness, there and gone.
Riley screamed again.
Was she hit?
Was she dying?
Was I?
Slick fired once more at the sound of her voice, but I was still tumbling away from her with the force of my first leap, rolling, deaf and sightless, into total obscurity.
I didn't know where she was.
I didn't know where anything was.
My body came to a stop.
There was silence.
Or if there was sound, I couldn't hear it with my ears still pulsing from the noise of the gunfire.
I lay absolutely still, knowing the slightest sound would draw another shot.
I tried to hear if Riley was breathing, but I couldn't hear anything.
I couldn't see anything.
I remembered how I had lost Bethray, how Iron had killed her as I chased after him, helpless.
I thought if I lost Riley now, I would never forgive myself.
My heart would be my hell forever.
I lay where I was, drowning in nothingness thick as seawater.
I don't know how many seconds passed, not many, maybe two or three.
My mind had started working again, clickety-click.
I was trying to assess the situation.
I'm sure Slick was doing the same.
He must have known that I had a gun, too.
It was his gun, after all.
So he couldn't turn a flashlight on, could he?
I'd shoot him dead if he did.
He couldn't make a move or make a sound any more than I could.
So he was just as blind as I was, and probably just as deaf as well.
All the while I was thinking this through, my hand was slipping slowly, slowly into my windbreaker, taking hold of the pistol grip, drawing the gun out.
Slowly, slowly.
One of us, Slick or me, was going to make a noise eventually.
One of us, Slick or me, was eventually going to give himself away.
One of us was going to die in the next few seconds.
As God was my witness, it would not be me.
Now, as the clangor in my ears subsided, and his ears too, I guessed, I began to hear something.
I thought it must be Slick.
I thought he was moving slowly, carefully in my direction, hunting me.
But I could still see nothing, nothing at all.
I clutched my gun in my sweaty hand, but I didn't fire.
If I missed, it would give my location away, and he would blow me to pieces.
Losing an eye had probably thrown his aim off, maybe even way off, but he was a practiced killer, and I imagined he'd adjust.
I could not afford a mistake.
I just lay there, and now the clammy sweat broke out on my face as well.
A floorboard creaked.
I held my breath.
The killer was closer.
Very close.
I pointed my gun at where I thought he might be, but I was still totally blind, too blind to fire.
The next time I heard his footstep, he seemed only a few yards away from me.
My finger tightened on the trigger.
Should I risk a shot?
Not yet.
A miss and I was dead.
I was afraid to take the chance.
One more footstep, I told myself.
If I hear one more footstep, I'll do it.
But the next thing I heard was not a step, and it wasn't close to me.
It was at a distance somewhere in the pitch darkness off my left shoulder.
It was a soft metallic chink, the sound of keys dropping to the floor.
And then a whisper, Riley's whisper.
Shit.
I held my breath.
I was at once thrilled with relief that she was still alive and terrified that Slick would fire at the sound of her voice and kill her.
But he didn't fire.
No.
He knew I had my gun just as he had his.
He had to make his next move just as carefully as I did.
But then came his next step, and he was moving away from me, moving toward her, toward the place where Riley had revealed herself.
A floorboard creaked off in that direction.
Of course, he didn't need to shoot and give himself away.
All he had to do was grab her.
Once he had her in his clutches, he could use her as a shield.
I'd be helpless.
Another soft footstep in the dark.
Slick was moving her away relentlessly.
It was only then, then at that last moment, that it dawned on me what Riley had done.
That strange, sad, crazy, clever little sister of mine.
As lost and loopy as she sometimes seemed, she had been ahead of everyone from the beginning.
She had outsmarted all of Orozco's hunters.
She had left a trail of private clues to lead me to this place.
She had even found the path through her own broken heart and mind to expose the truth of a vast conspiracy.
And now she had created the chance I needed to survive, because she had given herself away on purpose to draw Slick toward her and toward the dragon.
In the next second, his next step tripped the sensor.
The enormous beast at the funhouse exit blazed to light and roared.
Its great body, captured in whirling spotlights, reared and shuddered, its eyes flaring red, its mouth spitting make-believe fire.
And there was the killer outlined clearly against its nightmare brilliance.
I think Slick got it at the end.
He didn't look for Riley.
There was no point.
He looked for me.
He knew I had the gun and he knew I could see him clearly.
So he spun around in my direction, pulling the trigger even as he turned.
As the dragon reared and roared behind him, his gun spurt flame and death.
It all happened very fast.
But not fast enough, Slick.
Not half fast enough.
In that last moment before Slick had tripped the switch, I had guessed Riley's stratagem.
I was ready the instant the monster came to life.
Lying on the floor, I pulled the trigger of my gun and kept pulling it again and again until the hammer clicked on nothing and the weapon stopped jerking in my hand.
I saw Slick's shadow go reeling back toward the roaring beast, his arms wheeling, his gun flying off into darkness as the creature spat fake flame.
Slick half turned in the dancing spotlights and toppled down to the floor so hard, I thought he would keep toppling right through it, down and down forever.
I, meanwhile, was pushing up, screaming through the noise of the dragon.
Riley, Riley, Riley, are you there?
Dimly, through the ringing in my ears, I heard a circuit breaker give a humming thunk.
The dragon vanished.
The roaring ceased.
The funhouse went black again.
Baby, baby, baby, are you hit?
I was screaming wildly.
Are you hurt, Rye?
Are you wounded, sweetheart?
I rose trembling to my feet, searching the blackness for her, screaming and screaming.
Rye, are you hit?
Baby, baby, where are you?
The empty gun slipped from my fingers.
I stepped forward.
I kicked something.
I heard it roll, the flashlight.
In the next second, I had swooped down and scooped it up.
I shook it and the beam shot out and struck her where she stood.
My little sister, dazed and blinking and distant with shock, swimming in her black witch's robe, touching her tiny frame with both hands, checking for blood and pain.
She looked at me then with a look of wonder, almost exactly the way she used to look at me when I would lie in her bed beside her and tell her stories to help her sleep.
She spoke to me with the same sweet, childish affection and awe as she did then.
I think I'm okay, Os.
I don't think I'm shot.
I think I'm okay.
I cried out and pulled her into my arms and held her.
I was all love and all rage, both love and rage together.
I pressed her against me as hard as I could and cursed my father for driving her mad, cursed my mother for wanting us dead, cursed my big brother for abandoning us, and cursed Orozco and all his minions for every moment of fear and danger they had put us through.
The fools, I thought, the fools, fools, fools, the lot of them.
If they had just come after me, they would have beat me.
I was no hero.
I was just some guy.
They could have scared me off.
They could have run me down.
But I would kill every single one of them before I let them hurt my little sister.
I heard her speak weakly against my chest.
What do we do now, Os?
What are we going to do now?
I sighed.
I lifted my eyes to heaven, blinking away tears.
Grab the book, baby, I said.
Let's blow this funhouse.
As we worked our way back through the horror walk to the entrance, my biggest worry was that I would step through Satan's mouth and find myself in the blizzard on the White Mountain again, rushing into the sword fight with the abominable snowman.
I didn't have another battle in me.
If I'd had to fight that thing right then, I'd have been dead in seconds.
Some Providence protected me, though.
Right hand on the flashlight, left arm around Riley's narrow shoulders, holding her dazed little figure close to me as she clutched the manuscript to her chest, I stumbled out of the devil's maw into the moonlight.
Both of us were shocked and staring as we staggered across Happytown toward the fence.
Do you think we should call the police? Riley asked me.
I heard her voice trembling.
I felt her body trembling too.
No, I told her.
We're not going to call anyone.
But they'll find that guy's body in the morning.
They'll see I'm gone.
It'll be all right.
But how?
How will it be all right, Os?
I didn't answer.
I didn't know.
I only knew this.
I had to read the book.
Before anything else happened, I had to read another kingdom.
That was what Queen Elinda wanted.
That was what she had wanted from the start, and that's what I was going to do.
The wisest queen in all the world had chosen me to be her hero, so that's what I would be.
That had to be the best thing, I thought, because if she was the wisest, she must love the good, the greater good more than the lesser.
So what she wanted must be the most good thing, and I would do it if I could.
Riley and I crawled under the fence, first me, then her.
We stumbled across the street to where her passat was waiting.
Can you drive? I asked her.
I don't think so, she said.
Well, you have to.
Okay.
I handed her the key and took the manuscript from her.
I held the door while she sank wearily behind the wheel.
Then I closed her in and carried the manuscript around to the passenger side and got in beside her.
Riley was still just sitting there, just staring out through the windshield.
Where are we going now, Os? She asked me.
Back to L.A., I said.
She nodded, dazed.
She started the engine, but she didn't put the car in gear.
What's going to happen there? She asked.
I don't know, I told her.
I guess we're going to find out.
There's so many of them, she said, and they're so powerful.
Is it just going to be us against them?
Just us against the whole world?
I wagged my head a little.
She looked so small and frightened.
I had to tell her something, something to give her hope.
Not just us, I said.
We wouldn't have gotten this far if it was just us.
We have friends.
We have allies.
Her wide eyes swept across the moonlit night outside the windshield.
Where, Os? She asked me.
In another kingdom, I said.
I could see she was still trembling, still trembling and forlorn, as she looked down at the manuscript I was holding in my lap.
Let wisdom reign, I told her, and each man go his way.
She nodded without comprehension.
She took a deep breath and put the car in gear.
We started out of the parking lot.
As the Passat rolled along the road back toward the freeway, I took out my new phone.
I turned on the internet connection.
I signed in.
At once, all of my texts and emails appeared on the screen.
My friends from L.A., old friends from school, and Jane.
Jane Jane away.
Five emails from Jane.
Three texts.
Was I all right?
Where was I?
She was worried about me.
The world had not yet ended.
I had to drag my sleeve across my eyes then so I could see clearly.
Then, when I could, I put the phone away.
I reached up and turned on the reading light above my seat.
I undid the twine that bound the pages.
I removed the title page from the top and slipped it to the bottom of the pile.
Riley silently guided the car through the night.
I read the opening lines of the manuscript.
The truth is, by the time everything went crazy, I was pretty much crazy already.
Edgy, anxious, hypochondriacal.
30 years old, and I hardly recognized myself.
I mean, there was a time I used to be somebody.
Not somebody famous, just a dude, but somebody.
I used to be able to look in the mirror and say, that's me.
That's Austin Lively.
Produced by Jeremy00:00:53
This has been Another Kingdom by Andrew Klavan, performed by Michael Knowles.
This episode, directed and produced by Jonathan Hay, produced by Mathis Glover.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring, Associate Producer, Austin Stevens, Edited by Jim Nicol.
Sound design and mix by Dylan Case.
Audio recorded by Mike Cormina.
Music composed by Adrian Seely.
Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Jessua Alvera.
DIT by Scott Key.
And our production assistant is Colton Haas.
Visual Supervisor, Jake Jackson.
Lead illustrator, Rebecca Shapiro.
Illustrations by Anthony Clark.
Animations by Cole Holloway, Alvin Tyner, and Yi Han Su.
Another Kingdom is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.