PROLOGUE

The rising sun speared the outline of the Western portal with long needles of light. The rays scorched the boy with fiery heat, and anxiety knotted his stomach, bringing cramps and dizziness. In a handful of moments, the sun would crest the Gateway of the Continuum, and his Trial would begin.

On the first day of the Sacred Hours, his young body had burned away all the nourishment from his last meal. The stabbing hunger pangs gave way to thirst and a relentless ache in his back and legs by nightfall. Muscle spasms attacked on the second day. Throughout the second night, he focused on the sea to keep his knees from buckling beneath him.

The waves, turned to black glass by the touch of the moon, broke and rushed forward toward the base of the portal sunk in the sand. Only at high tide would the foam crests caress the Gateway's foot. When that happened, and the waves turned sapphire in the dawn light, the boy knew he had made it. Pride surged in his chest.

The boy glanced at his mentor, and his elation vanished. Mataya had taught him that the Sacred Hours were an act of compassion offered by Those Who Are Not Seen to save the lives of improper nominees for Trial. Even those few who made it through the Sacred Hours ran the risk of permanent madness from the ordeal that followed.

Hunger, thirst and pain had earned him one of two rewards: insanity or a glimpse of the complete unknown. He grasped at anticipation of the unknown and held onto it to keep himself from falling down.

The sun's rays struck his face. It was time.

Nawat, the boy's best friend, moved from outside the ritual boundaries to stand before him. He sketched a bow, offered an awkward smile, then reached out with a sun-browned hand to slip the sash of the boy's royal blue and gold tunic. The boy raised his arms to help him remove the garment, then swayed forward as a wave of dizziness struck. Nawat gripped his shoulders, steadying him. In the clarity that the Sacred Hours had given him, the boy looked into his friend's face and saw how much Nawat loved him.

Mataya's resonant voice cut across the soft roar of the waves with the chant of opening. The portal rumbled in response and the boy's attention jerked from Nawat. His heart pounded up into his throat. Mataya's voice strengthened in its purpose, and the double panels of the gateway started to break open. Nawat's fingers tightened on his shoulder one last time and slipped away.

The Gateway of the Continuum, carved on both sides with the history of those who served Those Who Are Not Seen, stood on the boundary between tide and land, its massive frame held up by nothing but the will of Those who had created it. When it was closed, a boy could trace the carvings and daydream on one side, or frolic in the waves on the other. When it was open, as now, the boy saw into the infinite hallways of the Continuum.

Mataya, still chanting, crossed the threshold. The boy followed, his eyes straight ahead. He knew his mother stood outside the circle, her trembling body held, restrained and comforted, in his father's tense arms. Her tears would break him, where physical deprivation had failed, so he did not look. The sound of her muffled sobs put jagged edges on the lump in his throat.

The boy inhaled the sea air, heard the early morning calls of sea birds, and then the gateway rumbled shut behind him. The air of the Continuum closed over his senses, stilling his mind, centering it on what lay ahead.

He had a boy's countless wild imaginings of what the Trial would be, but now, in that stillness, the voice of the man he would become spoke. The world he had just left would never exist for him again, and he had not bothered to look back.

The unfamiliar stab of regret stopped his breath. Like a floundering swimmer, he struggled to grasp the nebulous form of his life. Memories of mud between his toes, his mother's warm touch, and a horse's sweat-stained flank beneath his thigh drifted through his mind. For one last moment, he clung to all that had been his life, and offered a word that trembled on the edge of his soul like an unshed tear.
Farewell.

CHAPTER 1
As I grew up, the monster under my bed didn't go away. I just lost the ability to see it.
-Rob Steigir

The clock on the man's desk read half past one in the morning, but the child did not sleep. She pretended she did, because she did not want the man to realize she watched him. Her mother's body curled around her protectively, each even breath stirring the fine hair on the child's neck. But Molly did not feel safe. She never felt safe with the man.

He worked on his computer, his back to them. He and her mother had thought she slept, earlier. She lay on the floor, curled up in the teddy bear sleeping bag, and pretended to be a caterpillar in a cocoon, motionless, waiting for her wings to form. She listened to the soft moans of her mother and the peculiar silence of the man, as if he held his breath. Molly touched herself once where the man touched her mother and it felt odd, distantly uncomfortable, but not really. She understood how it made her mother move like waving grass beneath him. The man did not have a place like that, though, because nothing her mother touched made him moan or sigh as she did.

He shifted at his desk and her eyes narrowed to small slits. He had put on his pants, but he did not wear a shirt. The scars along his powerful back looked like places where the muscles had gotten too big and broken through. He bent over his book, and she could see the computer screen over his left shoulder.

A troll strode across the star screensaver, kicking asteroids out of its path like footballs. It stopped in the center of the screen and put furred, long-taloned fingers on its skeletal hips. "Edward," it croaked.

Molly shut her eyes as Edward's head whipped around. She opened them a long minute later and her heart ricocheted off her rib cage. He stared at her. The troll did cartwheels across the screen behind him.

The man put a finger to his lips. She pointed a trembling finger at the computer. The black eyes flamed and she burrowed deeper against her mother. The sleeping woman shifted, laying an arm around the little girl.

"Edward," the troll growled.

The man's eyes widened and his head turned back toward the screen.

"About time." The creature fixed the man with a blood red stare. "What was started must be finished. Kenn's blood demands it."

Edward tapped on the keyboard. His arms jerked back. Molly smelled burned flesh.

"This is not a prank, Edward." The troll sat down and idly swung his legs, as if he sat on a chair too big for him. "Put your hand on the screen. I'll show you."

The man lifted his arm, and the scars on his back shifted like snakes gliding over ripples of sand. When Edward's fingers made contact with the screen, the troll's talons reached out of the glass and overlapped his.

Molly wanted to shut her eyes, but the instinct for survival kept them open and watching.

"Do you see who I am?" the troll said. His claws retracted into the screen and Edward lifted his hand from the glass. "You will help me."

The man rose and turned away from the monitor. He was tall, a giant to Molly, and he laid his forearm against the top of the window frame to stare out at the courtyard below.

"Why would I?" he murmured at last. It was barely a whisper, but the monster on the screen heard it. Molly was sure it could hear the pounding of her heart.

"Because I will it," the troll snarled. "Because you obey my laws!"

Edward walked to the monitor and flipped off the disk drive. The monster opened his mouth on a roar of surprised invective, which cut to the undignified squawk of a beheaded chicken. The darkness swallowed him like the end of a macabre cartoon.

Molly watched Edward collect his textbooks and stack them, tallest to shortest, in his bookcase. He placed his pen and pencil in the clean plastic holder firmly attached to the side of his monitor. He laid his legal pad in a drawer. Then he went to a chest of drawers and withdrew a box of pre-dampened cloths.

He wiped down the desk where he had been working-the keyboard, the monitor and its casing. Molly smelled the disinfectant in the cloth, but its contact with his burned flesh did not appear to bother him as it did Molly when her mother used the wet towelettes to clean her scrapes.

When he was done, he neatly folded the cloth and laid it in the empty wastebasket. Then he walked to the nightstand. He looked at Molly and she stared up at him, but only for a second. She knew the rules of the animal kingdom. She cast her eyes down and away.

Edward opened the nightstand drawer and took out a cigarette. A flame sparked, and smoke filled her nose. He went four steps across the room and picked up his desk chair with one large hand. He brought it back to the bed, placed it before her and her mother, and straddled it.

The child swallowed on a dry throat. The shaking started in her stomach and spread out until she quivered everywhere.

Her mother shifted slightly, drawing more of the quilt over Molly. She pulled it up high, but not enough to hide the child's face.

"S'okay, sweetie," she murmured, without opening her eyes. Molly knew better.

"You're having a nightmare." Edward's breath was acrid smoke that stung her eyes and made them water. His face got closer as he tilted the chair. She whimpered. "You are having a nightmare."

She had no argument with that. Molly had learned a long time ago that she did not have to be asleep to have a nightmare.

"Close your eyes."

She did. She could feel his breath on her face, smell the smoke. Molly thought she would choke on her fear, but didn't. She stopped listening to his breathing and listened to her mother's. She tried to breathe like her, unconsciously seeking the memory of breathing together, as they had when she was safe within the womb. She might find oblivion that way, far away from what was happening in this bedroom. Things got slower, calmer. Molly felt the warmth of her mother surround her.

Abruptly, the mattress shifted, and he moved the chair. Molly did not open her eyes, but she heard him start the computer, and when a block of shadows appeared before her closed lids, she knew he was in front of the monitor again.

His whispered words rasped against her ears like dead leaves across old bones.

"Show me more."