Oliver felt the strange tugging sensation on his body of the portal pulling him through. No matter how many portals he went through, he’d never get used to the feeling. It felt like having his atoms ripped apart and rescrambled.
The flashing purple lights of the portal whizzed past him, blindingly bright and adding to his general discomfort. He felt nausea swirl in his stomach.
Oliver couldn’t help but feel for his friends. Neither Walter nor Hazel had ever traveled through a portal before, and this one was particularly brutal, especially considering there was no guarantee they’d even make it out the other end. He could only pray that he’d be able to safely lead them to their desired destination. But if his intentions had not been pure enough, they’d all be ejected into space. The thought was just too terrible to consider.
After what felt like hours, Oliver heard a strange sucking noise, like water draining through a plug hole. Then with a pop like a bursting balloon, all the flashing lights and tugging sensations disappeared.
Oliver felt himself fly through the air as if catapulted. He landed hard on the ground and groaned from the pain.
Three distinct thudding noises came from behind him and Oliver knew that was the sound of each one of his companions landing.
He looked back. They all looked stunned and disheveled. David’s ponytail had come undone during the journey, and Hazel’s bun looked messy and askew. Once again, Walter was the most unfazed. He leapt up and punched the air.
“That was awesome!”
Oliver quickly scrambled to his feet. “Shh!” he said, running toward Walter. “We don’t know where we are. Don’t draw so much attention to us!”
He reached Walter at the same time as Hazel and David.
“Which begs the question,” Hazel said. “Where are we?”
Everyone began to glance around. They were surrounded by a series of buildings that appeared to be in various states of disrepair. They’d clearly once been extremely ornate and extravagant churches, with stone steps, tall white columns, and domed roofs, but something had ravished them. Time? War? It looked possible even that the building materials had been scavenged. Overall, they all looked close to collapse.
The streets were also filthy. Wild livestock roamed around, dropping dung behind them, and several foxes darted in and out of the churches.
Oliver shuddered. “Somewhere in Europe. But where and when precisely, I’ve not idea. Let’s look for clues.”
They began to pace the streets. There were no cars, but plenty of horse manure, which helped them narrow down the era to prior the invention of the automobile. There were very few people scattered around the place, mainly beggars, which made the place feel a bit like a ghost town.
“I feel like the population must have shrunk recently,” Hazel said. “There seem to be far too few people for all these buildings.”
“So we’re perhaps in some kind of old city that’s lost its people for some reason,” Oliver suggested. “That would explain why the buildings look so dilapidated.”
“Look there!” Hazel said, pointing at a rectangular area surrounded by large, important-looking buildings. “That looks like a Roman forum. Only it’s filled with cattle and markets.” Her eyes widened with excitement. “I think we might be in Rome. Right at the cusp of the Renaissance.”
“The what?” Walter asked.
“The moment in Europe that marks the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity,” she replied with enthusiasm. “Where art and architecture and philosophy and trade flourished. You know, the age of discovery?”
Walter let out a mocking laugh. “You’re such a nerd.”
But Hazel was on a roll. She completely ignored Walter, looking increasingly excited. “That’s why all the buildings are falling down. The economy collapsed in the fourteenth century because of war and plague, as well as famine from a small ice age. The population shrank by somewhere between twenty-five and fifty percent.”
“So it must be early fifteen hundreds,” Oliver replied.
“I think so,” Hazel said with a nod.
Just then, a pair of women walked past them chatting. Oliver didn’t understand the language. But David was listening intently, as though perhaps he did.
Oliver raised his eyebrows at David expectantly. “Well? Did you understand them?”
David nodded slowly. “Yes. I can speak several languages. Perhaps that’s another reason Professor Amethyst sent me.”
“And?” Oliver asked. “Are we right? Are we in Italy?”
David nodded. “We’re in Italy.”
Oliver couldn’t help but exclaim, “Italy!”
Hazel, too, seemed completely enthralled by where they’d ended up. “Rome! During the Renaissance!”
Walter whirled and craned his head up to take in the sight of the tall, crumbling churches. “I’m glad you two are so happy about where we ended up. I’m just glad we’re not dead.”
“So, the portal took us to sixteenth-century Italy,” Hazel said, still looking awed despite her attempt to get back to business. “Why would the cure for Esther be here?”
At the mention of Esther’s name, Oliver felt his stomach twist. There was no time to be entranced by the surroundings, to marvel at having landed in sixteenth-century Italy, because every second that passed was a second wasted.
“We need to work out where to go next,” he said hurriedly.
Oliver pulled out his compass. But to his surprise, while the main golden dial was pointing at a vial—which surely represented medicine—all the other smaller dials were pointing at the same symbol. It was giving him no other clues.
Oliver’s shoulders slumped. He felt defeated.
“It-it’s not working,” he stammered, helplessly.
Now what? They were back in Renaissance Rome with no idea where to go or what to do next! Every moment they stood there dithering was another moment Esther came toward death.
“Uhhh… Oliver…” David said in a warning voice.
Oliver peeled his eyes away from the useless compass. To his surprise, there was a young boy running toward them. He looked desperately concerned.
Oliver felt dread rise through him. Who was the boy and why was he homing in on them like that, with a look of pure anxiety?
He ran up to them and began to speak in urgent, rapid Italian. Oliver looked helplessly to Hazel and Walter, who looked just as clueless as he must have.
David took the lead. He stepped forward and nodded along as the boy spoke.
When the tanned-skinned boy finally finished, David looked over his shoulder at Oliver.
“He’s a seer,” he said.
Oliver’s eyebrows pinged up his forehead. “A seer? How did he find us?”
“He says that when we activated the portal it sent a beacon alarm to his school. He says we must follow him. It’s too dangerous here.”
“But why?” Hazel asked. “What’s dangerous about standing innocently in the streets?”
“Beyond the roaming livestock and beggars, you mean,” Walter quipped.
David translated her question to the boy. He shook his head, seemingly growing more and more exasperated. He spoke in a quick, exaggerated manner, throwing his arms around theatrically.
“Well?” Oliver asked, growing increasingly anxious with every second that passed.
“The beacon,” David gasped, relaying the message back to the others. He locked eyes with Oliver, his expression now deeply troubled. “It doesn’t just send an alarm to the school. The alarm can be picked up by all seers.”
Hazel gasped. “You mean…”
“Rogues,” David finished for her. “We’ve sent out a signal to them that we’re here.”
Oliver felt the warmth drain from his face. Finally he understood why the Italian seer boy was so frantic. They’d practically sent out a signal for any rogue seer to come along and mess up history!
“Quick,” Oliver told his friends. “Let’s get out of here.”
Hazel grabbed his arm. “Are you sure we can trust this boy?”
“He risked a lot just to come here and get us,” Walter said.
But Oliver wasn’t so sure.
“David, can you ask him more about himself? Find out if there’s any way to prove what he’s telling us?” he asked.
David looked back to the boy and asked him something in Italian. “His name is Gianni,” he relayed to the others. “He said he can prove that he’s trustworthy.”
The boy, Gianni, took a step forward and pulled from his pocket a bronze key. He held it out to Oliver, nudging it into his hand.
Wondering why Gianni seemed to want him to have it, Oliver took the key, frowning, and turned it in his hands. Then he understood.
There on the back was a familiar symbol. A ring with three evenly spaced eyes. The symbol of the School for Seers.
Oliver felt a smile tug at his lips. That symbol felt like home to him.
He showed it to the others. Walter nodded, satisfied, but Hazel folded her arms.
“I still don’t know,” she said.
Her skepticism reminded Oliver of how he’d felt toward David. But David had proved himself back at the portal and he now trusted David fully. His bodyguard would not lead them into danger.
“If David says we can trust Gianni, then I think we can trust him,” he told her.
A look of pride flashed across David’s features. “I promise you, Hazel. Gianni is exactly who he says he is. A seer. A friend sent to get us.”
Hazel chewed her lip as if deliberating. But finally she nodded. “I supposed statistically speaking we’re more likely to get caught by rogue seers if we stand here than if we go with him. So I’m in.”
Walter rolled his eyes. “Trust Hazel to make a decision based on statistics!”
Guided by Gianni, the seer boy from Renaissance-era Rome, the friends began to run.
Mistress Obsidian sat in her office, staring into the vision bowl. She’d been keeping a near-constant vigil over it, ignoring all signs of fatigue inside her that demanded she sleep, all signs of hunger telling her to eat. Nothing was more important to her than finding Oliver Blue and destroying him once and for all.
But the weariness was becoming hard to fight. She’d lost track of the days. Two? Possibly three? Her life had become staring obsessively into the vision bowl, listening to the constant shouts of Colonel Cain from outside her window as he trained Christopher Blue in the dark arts.
The thought made a smile twitch across her lips. There was no chance of failure this time. Christopher had the most dangerous magic inside of him. Along with the best training the dark army could offer and Chris’s unparalleled murderous desire to kill Oliver, this time they would succeed.
She just wished their mole would hurry up. What use was it sneaking a spy into the Amethyst School for Seers, to set the trap that would lure Oliver out, if they were going to take so long enact the plan?
She may have to conjure up another, one that would speed things along a little. Perhaps she could find someone within the school to manipulate. Throw in a little bit of time travel for fun. In fact, the more she thought of it, the more she realized just how enjoyable it would be. There had to be a student inside the School for Seers who was feeling dissatisfied. Molding an impressionable young mind—just as she had with Malcolm Malice, and now with Christopher Blue—was one of her favorite things to do.
Yes, she would dupe one of the students into doing her bidding.
No sooner had she decided on the new plan, than something in her vision bowl flickered.
Mistress Obsidian jerked up, straight-backed, and leaned closer to the bowl. Through the dark storm clouds that had obscured her view for days, she now saw a shimmering purple light, swirling.
She knew at once what she was looking at. It was a portal. Oliver Blue was on the move.
Excitement crackled through her veins. She watched intently as the image cleared even more. Then her heart jumped in her chest.
There he was! Oliver Blue!
He was standing on a very ornate street. Mistress Obsidian frowned, trying to place the architecture.
“Rome?” she muttered under her breath. “Fifteen hundreds?”
She watched on, revulsion swirling in the pit of her stomach, as Oliver and his pesky little friends all gathered around. Then she noticed another boy hurrying them through the streets.
The group reached a brick wall and the boy pressed a sequence of bricks. The wall hinged open.
Mistress Obsidian knew immediately what was happening. The other boy was a local seer and he was leading Oliver Blue into the safety of his own school! The second they were inside, she’d no longer be able to see him!
Frustration overcame her. She slammed her fists onto the tabletop as fury overwhelmed her. A growl of anger came from her chest.
“No matter where he goes, that pipsqueak always manages to get help!” she cried angrily.
Fuming, she paced over to the window and gripped the sill. She would not endure another three days staring into the vision bowl. She’d seen enough to work out that Oliver Blue was in 1500s Rome. He already had a head start. And support. There was no time to waste.
She threw open the window, ignoring the driving rain that pelted her.
“It’s time!” she roared into the black sky.
Her voice, magnified, boomed through the evening like a peeling bell.
She thundered back to the table and slunk down into her throne. A moment later, she heard the door open. In came Colonel Cain, Christopher Blue, and Malcolm Malice, responding to her summoning. They looked like drowned rats, covered in mud, their cheeks bright red with exertion. It was satisfying to see them that way.
“Sit,” she told them all brusquely.
They did as she commanded. Absolute obedience was Mistress Obsidian’s favorite thing.
“I’ve tracked Oliver Blue,” she announced. “There is no time to waste. You must travel to him immediately.”
Christopher’s face was aghast. “But I’ve been training since sunrise. It’s almost midnight. I’m exhausted.”
Mistress Obsidian felt irritation crackle through her. They were always so whiny, these students. She gave them the best education, the darkest powers, every chance to thrive and succeed and take over the universe, and all they ever did was complain.
“I have sat here for three days waiting for this signal,” Mistress Obsidian told him. “When you’ve done the same, then you can talk to me about being tired.”
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