Kaza Kingsley - The Search for Truth (Erec Rex)

Erec Rex: Search for Truth

Kaza Kingsley

For my uncle Alan, keyboard player extraordinaire, who gave me a true appreciation of music in general and the Beatles in particular. I hope you are jamming with John Lennon somewhere right now.

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

--Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

I am a stag of seven tines.

I am a wide flood on a plain.

I am a wind on the deep waters.

I am a shining tear of the sun.

I am a hawk on a cliff.

I am fair amongst flowers.

I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke.

I am a battle-waging spear.

I am a salmon in a pool.

I am a hill of poetry.

I am a ruthless boar.

I am a threatening noise from the sea.

Who but I knows the secret of the unhewn tomb?

--"The Song of Amergin," A.D. 400

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

The Substance Channel

CHAPTER TWO

The Ghost Surgeon

CHAPTER THREE

Mrs. Stain's Rumors

CHAPTER FOUR

A Smug Harpy and a Helpful Ghost

CHAPTER FIVE

The Torn Quest

CHAPTER SIX

The Pool Table

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Dragon in the Jungle

CHAPTER EIGHT

Swami Parvananda

CHAPTER NINE

The Little Dark Room

CHAPTER TEN

The Oracle

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Snail Mail from Oscar

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Manticore

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Virtue of Caring

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

King Stain

xi

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ugry's Advice

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Twrch Trwyth

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ghost Ship to Avalon

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Singing Crystal

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A Proposal

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Awen of Creation

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A Furious Butler

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A Disturbing Vision

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Novikov Time Bender

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Olwen Cullwich

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

King Piter's First Mistake

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Battle Between Love and Hate

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A Letter to Erec

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Old Magic

EPILOGUE

One Thousand Years Earlier

AFTERWORD

xii

CHAPTER ONE The Substance Channel

I T MUST HAVE been a dream. That was the only explanation Erec Rex could think of for what had just happened. Yes, a nightmare. That's what it was.

Thirteen-year-old Erec blinked a few times, waiting for his bedroom to appear. It did not. In fact, his skin still looked disturbingly green. And his fingernails--were they shrinking before his eyes? They hadn't really been long claws a moment ago, had they?

After waiting another minute, Erec squeezed his eyes shut, wishing

he was anywhere else. The sad fact had sunk in--he was not in bed after all. He was lying on his back in Fork-Out Grocery. Heaps of sparkling pink notebooks and toppled stacks of diaper boxes were scattered all around him in a big mess on the floor.

At first he thought he was covered in snow. Then he saw the slashed boxes. Torn white fluff from shredded Lil' Dumpling diapers covered everything around him like a Christmas display. But who would have shredded the diapers all over like that? He ran his hand through his dark hair, which was straight in front and wildly curly in the back, shaking diaper fuzz from his head.

Then Erec noticed gray dust sprinkling down from a black, charred hole in the side of a nearby case of spaghetti boxes. It looked like someone had blasted it with a flamethrower. Who could have come in here and done this? Someone really ransacked this place.

Erec gulped as a realization dawned on him. If he truly was here, in the grocery store, and he had not been dreaming, then maybe...

Could he have done all this?

This was not good.

A little girl stood staring at him, her lip trembling. She tugged on her mother's skirt and pointed at Erec. The mother glanced at him with disgust, as if he was a delinquent who made a mess of store displays for fun.

Erec wished that were true. Because what really happened was far worse than a bout of bad behavior. What had just happened, in fact, should never have occurred here, in New Jersey, in plain sight of normal people.

Erec hid his eyes with a diaper fluff-covered hand. He had to face the facts. He had begun to turn into a dragon.

His adopted siblings had seen it too. All five of them had been swarming around the grocery store, dumping unhealthy sugared products into their adoptive mother June's cart faster than she could

take them out. Danny and Sammy, thirteen-year-old twins with sandy brown hair, and Nell, eleven, had watched Erec grab hold of a shelf when his head began to spin. Nine-year-old, redheaded Trevor had popped around the corner just as Erec's vision faded out. And Zoey, just five, with wild blond curls and hazel eyes, was staring at him when he woke up on the ruined store display.

But it was what happened in between his vision fading and waking up among diapers that made Erec's heart race. He'd had a cloudy thought.

Cloudy thoughts were what Erec called the strange commands that took him over at times, forcing him to do whatever they said. His whole life he'd had to deal with being overcome, when he least expected it, with orders appearing in his head. Cloudy thoughts made him do things like run to the bottom of a staircase and hold his arms out. He would feel like an idiot crouching there, but then a little girl would tumble down the stairs into his arms. He would have saved her without even knowing she was coming. Cloudy thoughts had also saved his own life many times, giving him extra strength and telling him what he needed to know to survive.

But things changed. Erec inherited first one and then the other eye of his dragon friend, Aoquesth, who died saving Erec's life in a battle. The dragon eyes were now attached to the back of his own eyes, and carried special powers that he looked forward to discovering. The first one made his cloudy thoughts more intense, with visions like premonitions. But this was his first cloudy thought since he had gotten two dragon eyes, and it was different, more powerful than any he'd had before.

Erec took a breath. What had just happened to him in the grocery store? Right when he picked up a carton of his favorite cookies, Chocolate Springballs with cherry centers, everything had turned green. His eyes had swiveled around so that his dragon eyes were facing forward. His mind seemed to race through time so fast he couldn't make out what was happening. He remembered grabbing the metal shelf for support.

Then the vision in his head slowed down and showed him something terrible. His best friend, Bethany Cleary, was in danger.

Thick white ropes and webs hung in the air. Bethany was panting, long dark curls plastered against her sweaty face. She was backed against a wall, trapped. She had been running away from three boys, one with white, fuzzy hair covering his head and neck, another with an odd gray cap that stuck high over his head, and the third with black hair and an evil glint in his steely blue eyes. Now she was cornered.

Erec gasped. It was Dollick, Damon, and Balor Stain. They were the triplets working with evil Prince Baskania to overthrow the Kingdoms of the Keepers, the unseen magical realms connected to ours. Erec had been amazed when he found the strange place, and more shocked to learn he had been born there, in Alypium.

Balor Stain pointed what looked like a normal television remote control at Bethany. Her body stiffened as she was magically lifted from the ground.

A shadow appeared, morphing into a tall man with silver gray hair that grew into a sharp widow's peak. A cold blue eye peered from his face with a dark gap marking where his other eye should have been. Today his forehead was wider than the rest of his face. Across it gleamed seven more eyes, each from a different former owner.