Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 (6 page)

As he worked, Theo started to sweat. “Stop it.”

“I just want to take a peek inside.”

“I’m serious, Parker. My dad could lose his job.”

Parker found the right key. He slid it into the lock and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

“We won’t get caught. It’ll be okay, I swear. You’re allowed to have a little fun. Theo, if you’re this wound up at twelve, you’ll be dead of a heart attack
before you hit twenty. You have to learn how to enjoy life.”

Theo thought this over. Finally, he nodded. He didn’t really need his cousin’s approval, but he didn’t want Parker to think he was a wuss, either. The door opened and the kids
stepped into the office.

“See, this,” said Parker, “
this
is what I’m talking about.”

Professor Ellison’s office was a wonderland of fantastic stuff. The shelves lining the walls were overloaded with skulls, dusty weapons, and weird relics. The professor’s desk was
buried under teetering piles of unread mail and unopened boxes. No one had sat there for weeks.

Parker went right to the good stuff.

“Egypt, South America, Africa...There’s stuff here from everywhere,” he said, checking out a tiki idol almost as tall as he was.

Theo stayed by the door.

“Okay, Parker, you’ve had a look around. Can we please leave now, please?”

“Come on, buddy, hoist up your skirt and live a little. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Theo walked tentatively into the room. With the utmost respect for someone else’s personal property, he looked over some ancient scrolls and a mad tangle of necklaces that seemed to be
made out of gold and teeth. He shuddered at a dead monkey floating eerily in a jar of yellow formaldehyde.

“Creepy,” he said.

Parker hefted a brass dagger and gasped when he saw a row of what could only be genuine shrunken heads. He got face-to-face with one. It was the size of a baseball. Its skin was jet-black, and
its eyes and mouth were sewn shut.

“Too cool,” he said. “Do you think anyone would notice if something went missing?”

“Yes!” Theo said, flicking the tag on a stuffed monkey. “It’s all cataloged! Don’t take anything!”

“I won’t,” Parker said.

Theo glared at him.

“I won’t! I swear. Sheesh.”

Parker put the dagger down and wandered over to a series of newspaper articles and Web site printouts taped to a wall. Some were torn and yellowed with age. Some were brand-new. He read the
headlines aloud.

“‘Disturbance in South Korea.’ ‘Strange Sighting in Istanbul.’ ‘Government Attributes Odd Reports in Tennessee to Methane Gas Leak.’”

Theo wasn’t listening. He had found a door to another room and was checking to see if it was locked. It wasn’t.

Parker squinted at an article featuring a grainy photo. It was a picture of a man holding some kind of a large metal cylinder. The photo had been crossed out with a red marker.

“‘Tanzanian Miners Make Unusual Discovery.’”

Parker reached for the clipping. Just before his fingers touched it, he stopped. There were voices coming from outside the office door.

B65810—VESIROTH’S JOURNAL, CIRCA 900 B.C.

Tarinn has been with me for fifteen years now. The time slips away like rain sloshing down a gutter.

She has grown to be a capable and determined woman, and she has surprised me by earning my grudging respect. She is not my equal, naturally, but she studies for long hours and
she has learned much. Perhaps someday she will be something more than worthless.

For the first time in hundreds of years, I have a source of true companionship. Against my will, I find myself somehow drawn into discussions with her of the nature of the
Nexus, and we argue over our differing views of the power the Nexus affords. Tarinn grows increasingly convinced that overexposure to the Nexus erodes the soul, and that magick used in anger will
lead to one’s own destruction. What does she know about anger? She is naïve. Perhaps when she has lived as long as I have, her thinking will be more clear.

Always I search for the conclusion to Farrad’s spell. Always it eludes me. This failure is beginning to affect my usually pleasant disposition.

PARKER AND THEO BOTH FROZE.
Then, with the reflexes of twelve-year-old boys caught someplace they shouldn’t be, they both scrambled into
the office’s back room.

The room was for storage, and it was a mess of boxes and racks. They didn’t have time to close the door, so Parker and Theo flattened themselves against the wall. A black dread grew in the
pit of Parker’s stomach. Less then a week in New Hampshire and he was already in deep, deep trouble.

The door to the office opened, and Parker and Theo could hear a woman escort a man in.

“Where did you say you found it?” the woman asked.

“One of the guys on my crew dug it up,” said the man.

Parker and Theo heard the thump of something heavy being placed on the desk.

“At first we thought it might be an unexploded bomb from over at the shipyard, but one of my guys was in the army and he said that wasn’t it. Myself, I think it’s probably an
Indian thing, right? Some kind of sacred idol or something? I don’t know. Anyway, I asked around, and people told me this kind of thing is right up Ellison’s alley.”

Parker scrunched up his face. His curiosity was killing him. Theo frantically shook his head no, but Parker couldn’t resist peeking out the door. He had to see the thing they were talking
about.

He couldn’t see the woman, but he saw the man’s back. He was wearing filthy jeans and a paint-splattered shirt, and he was unwrapping a dirty towel from the thing on the desk. When
the man shifted, Parker could see that it was some kind of a container, a metal cylinder about two feet long, covered with weird engravings half-buried under the patina that came from being buried
underground for a long, long time. The ends of the object were capped.

Parker couldn’t tell if it was just his imagination, but the thing seemed to be faintly glowing.

“It’s an interesting piece, that’s for sure,” the woman said.

“I was wondering...I mean, you think maybe it’s made out of gold or something? Do you think it’s worth any money?” asked the man.

“It’s not gold,” the woman concluded. “Gold wouldn’t tarnish like this. I couldn’t tell you if it’s worth anything.”

The man turned around, and Parker ducked his head back just in time.

“The thing is...” the man said. “The thing is, that thing’s weird. I mean, it acts strange. We had a devil of a time prying it out of the ground. The pick Tommy was using
flew out of his hands when he hit at it, and none of us could really get a grip on the thing. It’s like it’s made out of magnets or something. I put it in the back of my truck, and my
dog just sat there growling at it. It’s just...weird.”

“Well, like I said, the professor’s away at a dig until Wednesday. If you like, you could just leave it here.”

“That’s fine by me. I’ll be happy to get rid of it, to tell you the truth, even if it
is
worth a few bucks. Whatever that thing is, it gives me the creeps.”

The woman led the man out and shut the door, leaving Parker and Theo alone in the office. Home free.

But one of the straps on Theo’s book bag was caught on something. He gave it a mighty tug and pulled an entire rack of iron spears over. They clanged when they hit the floor, making
slightly less noise than a plane crash might.

Parker and Theo braced for the worst, but they were okay. The assistant and the man had gone.

Parker smirked at Theo, who shrugged back. Parker went back to the other room as Theo started to pick up the spears.

Parker saw the metal canister on Professor Ellison’s desk. He walked over and put his hand near the object before pulling it away. He couldn’t stop staring at it.

In the back room, Theo struggled with the spears. He would get them all upright, only to see one tip over into the next, causing all the spears to go down again. He was contemplating the idea of
just leaving the stupid things on the floor when he noticed something strange about the wall behind the rack.

It was shimmering.

Not a whole lot, but walls don’t usually do that at all, so even a little bit of shimmering is bizarre.

Theo reached out his hand, mesmerized. When his fingers touched the wall, Theo was blown backward as if he had touched an electric fence. He hit the floor on his back, the papers from his book
bag flying around him.

Theo just stayed there for a moment, catching his breath. Then he got to his feet and crammed his homework back into his bag, never taking his eyes off that glistening wall.

He ran to the other room, where he found Parker zipping up his own book bag.

Theo grabbed his cousin’s arm.

“We have to get out of here. Now.”

“Right behind you,” said Parker.

Parker turned off the office lights before he closed the door. The towel was still on Professor Ellison’s desk.

The weird container it had once covered was gone.

B65810—VESIROTH’S JOURNAL, CIRCA 900 B.C.

The spell is mine!

In the commission of her daily chores, Tarinn stumbled upon a tattered book that had fallen into the hands of a novice wizard. The intellectual titan had attempted to cast the
spell fragment but managed only to annihilate himself in a burst of fire.

Tarinn handed me the book, triumphant. She knows that I search for something, but in our years together I have managed to keep my true aims hidden. She thinks bringing me this
book will endear her to me. In fact, it only underscores the fact that I no longer need her.

I hold the book in my hands and I run my fingers over its charred pages. I can feel the strength that courses within. Soon, the world will be mine.

B66015

I should have known that I could not keep my plans from Tarinn forever. I admit now I underestimated her hunger for knowledge. She grows more powerful every
day, and I begin to suspect that someday her connection to the Nexus will rival my own.

She watched me for days as I pieced together the spell fragments, experimenting with different orders. Finally, she made her own calculations and realized what the spell
was.

She was horrified. She tried to reason with me. Me, the great Vesiroth! She attempted to convince me that I am making a mistake and will grow to regret the path I have chosen,
as if I had not spent centuries formulating my plans for a world at peace, with me as its sovereign. Tarinn could never understand the wisdom of my true goal. She once viewed the Nexus as an aid to
mankind, but now sees it as a threat. She is convinced that no one can control magick this strong.

She is a fool. I have put all weakness behind me.

When she saw I had no intention of backing away from a lifetime of work, she snatched the pages from my table and ran to the fire. All reason fled from me. Furious, I cast a
spell of binding that swept Tarinn up and violently pinned her high against a wall. My rage knew no bounds. The papers fell to the floor as I raised my hands again, intent on reducing my apprentice
to ash. As the temperature in the room rose, Tarinn’s eyes grew wide with horror.

In all the time Tarinn was with me, she had never shown fear in my presence. Tarinn alone seemed to see past the thing I have become and glimpse the man I once was. Now, she
was like all the rest, cowering in the company of a thing driven past reason by dark magick.

What had I become? Was I truly now a monster, bringing nothing but sorrow to anyone who would dare approach me? I lowered my hands, and Tarinn fell to the stone floor with a
thud. I gathered my papers while she crawled to the door. When I turned back, she was gone, and with her the last vestiges of anything within me that could be considered human.

I have no further need of her. I can run my own errands and cook my own food. Let her go back to her children’s tricks and illusions. Simpletons like her should leave
the real magick to men of vision.

I am Vesiroth. I stand alone.

PARKER DRANK A COKE AND
pondered his next move.

He had been futzing with his stolen container for hours in his room, with his door shut and his blinds closed, in what might be considered to be a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. He looked
at the mess he had made so far. A hammer, a rusty saw, and a monkey wrench were laid out next to him on the bed. He had tried banging on the canister, and sawing at it, and prying at the caps.
Nothing worked. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t even put a scratch on the thing. It just would. Not. Open.

He put the can of soda back on the table and hoisted the metal cylinder. Heavy, he thought. Well made. The endcaps turned, but no matter how much he tried, they didn’t unscrew. The etched
markings on the canister’s sides were deeply grooved, and if you squinted at them, they glowed slightly green. What could make it do that? Emeralds, maybe? Whatever was inside there was
something special, he just knew it.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and picked up a flat-head screwdriver. After a moment’s consideration, he jammed the screwdriver’s tip into the slight gap where one of the
thing’s endcaps met its body. He pried at it with all his might, but nothing happened. Well, if there was one thing that Parker had learned in almost a full half a year of junior high school,
it was that sometimes what was called for was sheer brute force. He set the canister on the floor, inserted the screwdriver, and stepped on it, applying every ounce of his one hundred and eleven
pounds. Parker thought that the cap actually gave a little, so he stepped down harder. Suddenly, an arc of blue electricity came off the thing. The lightning made a sound like a bug zapper as it
traced the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room. When it touched the overhead light, the bulb inside exploded, plunging the room into darkness.