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Amber staggered back, falling
into the wall.
    There was something wrong, something
severely wrong. The shadow came again, this time so fleeting that a
black blur barely made it past the edge of her vision. Amber raised
her hand to her throat and swallowed hard a few times. She closed
her eyes, trying to will the feeling away, but she could not.
Shaking her head, she opened her eyes again, only to see a blue
incandescence issuing forth from her father’s room.
    It is time, a voice seemed to say beside her, but when she
looked, there was no one around. Go
investigate, Amber, the voice urged. She
couldn’t tell from where, or who, the voice could be coming from.
It sounded both male and female, young and old. It sounded like two
opposite extremes meeting, and convincing her to do something for
the commonality of these two differing beings. It was as if the two
voices urging her on had never in the history of time agreed on
anything, until this moment.
    The light at the end of the hall
pulsed. It seemed hungry, urgent. As it throbbed, a strange moan
came to Amber, a kind of metallic groan, like a wet crystal goblet
being rubbed over and over, creating a musical, eerie
wail.
    With strained effort, Amber lifted her
foot and placed one before the other. Her hand still at her throat,
swallowing hard, aching with power and deaf from the moaning, Amber
sluggishly made her way down the hall. Unlike most tales of wyrd
and intrigue, each step did not get easier; instead each step
burdened her to the point of pain. Yet something prodded her on;
her very desire was to be at the glowing, be in that beautiful
light, but there was something else holding her back. It was as if
two forces were controlling her, and Amber was simply standing back
watching it unfold. One force urged her on toward the light;
another tried to hold her back to stop her from entering
it.
    She finally made it to her father’s
door, but Amber could not remember having come the distance. She
looked back where she had been rooted to the floor, and wondered
how she had made it here. A strange feeling overcame her then, like
she hadn’t really moved at all.
    The throbbing power would not be sated,
however, and Amber was only given a moment to ponder what had
brought her here before the throbbing and glowing intensified.
Closing her eyes, Amber drew upon all of her will to step over the
threshold and into her father’s chamber.
    Then something shattered.
    Instantly everything came to a violent
halt. The air was forced out of her lungs, and Amber frantically
clung to her throat, this time not urging herself to swallow, but
to breathe.
    “Amber?” Jovian called from his bedroom
door. Suddenly a panicked look crossed his face, and he rushed for
her.
    The blood began thundering in her ears
again, this time from lack of oxygen, and Amber felt as though her
eyes were trying to swell, explode, all the while her lungs burned
like they were being filled with a liquid fire. The earth was
spinning out of control. The walls and floor heaved, Amber gasped,
and Jovian ran in slow motion to her side. Suddenly her vision
faded, like a light slowly flickering on and off, and then finally
completely shutting off, leaving her under a veil of utter
darkness.
    From where Jovian bent over her he
could see his sister grasping at her throat, he could see her
unstable legs weaving her to their father’s room. Then finally he
watched as she went completely limp and fell in a midnight blue and
silver heap on the floor.
    “What happened?” Joya asked joining
Jovian at the end of the hall with Angelica.
    Joya pushed Jovian out of the way, and
knelt beside her sister, quickly checking her heartbeat and her
breathing. “She seems to be fine, at least outwardly.” Joya
frowned. “Jovian, can you get her into bed? Angelica, go get
Grace—”
    “Wait!” Jovian said quietly, yet
urgently. “She seems to be coming around. Amber? Amber!” He tapped
her lightly on the face. “She looked like she