Chapter One
Patchface and Benjamin
A crack at her window—so loud she thought the glass shattered—sent Validus Smith rolling off her rumpled bed and onto the floor. She had been in the middle of tying her shoes, her jeans and her favorite t-shirt already on. Another crack at the window, only this time Val saw what caused it. Someone was throwing rocks.
She crawled to the window and peeked over the white-painted sill to see her best friend Alex below, lifting another stone. His books were strewn on the ground at his feet—he always had lots of books—and a wide grin was plastered all over his face, or at least what she could see of it with his blond hair falling over his eyes. She pushed the window open.
“Alex Shields, put that rock down! Are you trying to break my window?”
He pushed the hair back from his face and called, “Did I scare you, Val?”
“No.”
He grinned. “Looks like you just got up from the floor.”
She smiled back at him. “I have strong reflexes. Go knock on the front door, and Mom will let you in. But don’t tell her you were throwing rocks at the window!” Validus slung her backpack on and ran down the stairs.
Mrs. Smith opened the door and shuffled Alex to the breakfast table, straightening his shirt and making approving, clucking noises. He looked embarrassed by the attention. Mrs. Smith’s hair was perfect, and she wore an apron. She looked like a mom from an old black and white TV show.
“Leave Alex alone, Mom.”
Mrs. Smith swooped over and put her palm on Validus’s forehead, just as Mr. Smith walked into the room, his thin hair sticking up and his round spectacles like owl eyes. “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.
“Her temperature is normal,” Mrs. Smith said, just as she said every morning and sometimes in the afternoon or before bed. “Tie your shoes, Val.”
Mr. Smith poured himself a mug of coffee. “A normal temperature,” he said with pride, as if Validus had taken top honors in her class. “Wonderful. Feeling like yourself today, then?”
Validus rolled her eyes. “Who else, Dad?”
He added a spoonful of sugar to his coffee, stirring as he sat up straighter in the chair. “Hard to say. For instance, I feel like an ancient Mesopotamian king.”
Alex’s eyes lit up. “Still working on your translation of Gilgamesh, sir?”
“Yes, my boy, yes! I’ve spent all morning reviewing my Akkadian grammar. What are you reading these days, my bookish friend?”
Alex pushed some toast in his mouth and pointed at a pile of books at his elbow. “The French knights of Charlemagne. Miss Holly suggested it. Interesting stuff.”
Mr. Smith turned to his wife and said, “The Twelve Peers of Charlemagne! Did you hear that, dear? How thrilling.”
Mrs. Smith frowned, looked to the clock, kissed Validus on the top of the head, and shooed them both out the door. “You’re going to be late. Have a wonderful day at school, Validus! Good-bye, Alex! Remember, stay away from trouble, and trouble will stay away from you.”
Mr. Smith crowded into the doorway and shouted after them, “Remember to watch your temper, Validus Smith!”
“Dad!” Validus sent a pointed glare back at her father, who smiled and waved. Validus and Alex turned down the sidewalk and headed toward the school. “Sorry about my parents. They’re so . . .”
“Great?”
“I was going to say weird.” She shrugged.
Alex laughed. “Maybe they’re great if you don’t live with them.”
Just then Jeremy Lane walked up alongside them and said, “Hi, Valerie.” Jeremy wore lumpy, oversized shirts and baggy jeans. His shoes looked as if they were worn through mud and weeds and never cleaned. His hair always looked like he just woke up. He had a round, red face, and he never missed a chance to bully those around him.
Validus took a deep breath, put her hands on her hips, and said calmly, “I’ve told you a hundred times, Jeremy, my name is Validus. From the Latin.” That’s what her parents said every time she complained about her name. More than once she told them the name was too weird. Each time they looked at each other in shock, and then Dad would say, “Honey, it’s from the Latin.”
Jeremy laughed for a long time. “Pig Latin,” he said, and he punched Alex in the arm, hard. Validus bit the inside of her cheek and kept her clenched hands at her side. It took everything she had not to punch Jeremy herself, but Alex just rubbed his arm and shot Jeremy a dirty look.
They crossed onto school property, and Jeremy looked around carefully. Alex called out to a teacher and waved, to make sure Jeremy knew he was being watched. He sneered and walked away from them quickly and disappeared into the school. Alex pointed to the clock on the front of the building. He and Val hurried down the tiled hallway and into their classroom. Mom was right, they were almost late.
“Look,” Alex said as they unloaded their books. “New kids.” He tilted his head to the back of the classroom where a boy and girl stood nervously by the door. The boy scuffed the floor with one foot. His long, thin face was chestnut brown on the sides and forehead, but a shocking white patch extended across his nose and chin. A burn mark, maybe, Validus thought. His black hair fell past his shoulders. He didn’t look like any other kid she had ever seen.
The girl had reddish orange hair and green eyes, and though her eyes were only half open, she seemed to be studying the classroom and the people in it. Both of the new kids looked as if they got dressed without parental approval. Their clothes didn’t fit well. The boy’s jeans were so long and baggy, the legs were cuffed three or four times to keep from dragging. The girl wore a long, green shirt tied up to keep it from looking like a dress.
The bell rang and a man, thin as an arrow, wrote his name on the board, his spidery fingers turning the chalk so it screeched. Mr. Jurgins. Validus sighed. She couldn’t believe they had a substitute teacher. Miss Holly hardly ever missed a day of class, and she hadn’t said anything about missing today. The substitute smiled sourly at the class. “That is my name.” He looked over the classroom, his black eyes lingering momentarily on Validus. “We have two new students today, class. Sit down, children. Right there at the back, you two. That’s fine. Now, your names are . . . Benjamin Gultiger?” He looked over his round glasses at the boy, who shook his head, his long hair covering his face.
“That’s me, I think,” the girl said.
Jeremy had slipped into the classroom just as the bell rang, out of breath and probably up to no good. He let out a loud guffaw and shouted. “Maybe you can be Valerie’s boyfriend, Benjamin.” Validus scowled at him. Jeremy had tried to think up other ways of mispronouncing Val’s name, but he wasn’t smart enough to come up with anything other than calling her Valerie. It could be worse. But the substitute didn’t reprimand Jeremy, which was a bad sign. Jeremy Lane would be punching kids by the end of the day if he thought he could get away with it.
“You think your name is Benjamin?” Mr. Jurgins looked down his nose at the girl.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“So the girl is named Benjamin,” Mr. Jurgins said. He looked at the boy with the brown and white face. “Then you must be, eh, Apul Lhusa?” Mr. Jurgins lowered the roll sheet and looked at the strange boy with the long black hair. The new kid nodded and blew the hair out of his face. “Answer me when I ask you a question.” The boy cocked his head but didn’t say anything.
“Maybe he only answers if you call him Patchface,” Jeremy said, and his laughter rippled out into the rest of the classroom. Validus looked at Alex, who rolled his eyes and frowned. Alex had threatened more than once to punch Jeremy in the face, but Validus convinced him not to bother. “You’d just end up in the principal’s office, and Jeremy would call you my boyfriend. It’s not worth it.”
Benjamin was sitting in the desk next to Jeremy, her green eyes still half closed, almost lazy. She leaned over and whispered something to Jeremy then smiled and showed off her perfect, tiny white teeth. Jeremy stopped laughing, and his face drained of color. His friends noticed, and they stopped laughing too. Then his face hardened, and he glared at Benjamin.
“No more talking in class, Benjamin,” Mr. Jurgins sneered. Alex gasped, and Validus knew he was about to say how unfair it was when Mr. Jurgins turned to him and asked, “Have you something to add, Mr. . . . Shields, is it?” Alex didn’t say anything, he just stared down at his desk.
Mr. Jurgins turned his attention to the boy with the white patch on his face. “Now. Would you prefer to be called Apul or Patchface?” Validus gasped this time, and Mr. Jurgins slowly turned his head toward her, the tip of his tongue flicking out. He looked like a snake smelling around for a mouse. Validus froze. No one spoke, not even Jeremy. “Well then. Patchface it is,” Mr. Jurgins said. Validus felt her stomach drop into her shoes.
No one dared speak after that, and the morning dragged on slowly. Validus felt trapped, like being in a glass cage with that same snake. She rubbed her eyes. This whole thing felt unfair. Suddenly, Validus blurted out, “What happened to Miss Holly?”
Mr. Jurgins looked at Validus blankly, as if his eyes were having trouble focusing. Then one side of his mouth turned up into a smile. “I think you can stay in class during the break for speaking out of turn, Valerie. And don’t think your precious Miss Holly can do anything about it. She won’t be back.”
Validus’s face grew hot, but she remembered her father’s warning to watch her temper and bit her lip to keep from saying what she wanted to say. Still, because she was going to miss her break anyway, she asked, “What happened to her?”
Mr. Jurgins turned his back and started to write on the board again. “Nothing, child. She couldn’t stand the lot of you anymore, that’s all.” Then he laughed. A cold, mirthless laugh that sent chills up and down Validus’s arms and made the hair on her neck stand up. She would rather be sent to the principal’s office than sit with Mr. Jurgins during break. When it came she would bolt out the door and head for the far corners of the blacktop or the field. Validus saw that work once in a while for Jeremy.
But when break finally came, Mr. Jurgins stood with one thin finger on Validus’s desk before announcing it. Then he bent over and whispered, “But you, little rat, will stay here with me.” Validus’s heart rapped against her chest, and she took a deep breath. She looked at Alex, who hesitated, deep concern in his eyes. But then Alex ran out the door with everyone else. There was nothing he could have done anyway.
Mr. Jurgins waited until the entire class was gone and then folded himself backward into the desk in front of Validus, so his pointy elbows were on the desktop and his strange diamond-shaped face and small black eyes were hanging just in front of Validus’s face. “You think you’re the paladin of the universe, don’t you, Miss Smith?” His breath was cold and papery. Validus wanted to scoot away from him, but she couldn’t. She leaned as far back as she could, until her neck hurt, but Mr. Jurgins’s face just seemed to follow her and to hang inches in front of her.
“I don’t know that word,” she said.
Jurgins laughed, but it was only a sound. His face didn’t change. “The Universe, child. The earth, the sun, other earths and other suns, and the dark spaces between them. All that is one.”
“The other word,” she said, getting angry.
Mr. Jurgins turned his head sideways and a little away, sizing Validus up. “Don’t play games with me, Miss Smith. I know you’re the paladin. They’ll find your little broken body somewhere on the field, just like Miss Holly. And don’t think any help is coming. Silverback and his Breakers have shattered the Sword of Six Worlds.”
The air pushed out of Validus’s chest. She didn’t understand everything Jurgins was saying, but the threat was clear enough. “They’ll catch you. You’ll go to jail.”
“Jail,” Mr. Jurgins said, dismissing it. “I’ll be gone. Home in my own cozy little universe and a hero for disposing of a paladin. We can’t have you coming into our world and causing problems.”
“I’m not a . . . whatever you said.”
“A paladin? A palace guard? A knight-errant? Hmmmm. I might believe you. Nevertheless, it would be safer for me to kill you. Maybe your little friend Alex is the paladin. I know it’s someone in this class, or your Miss Holly wouldn’t have denied it so vehemently.” His hands struck out so fast Validus didn’t even see them move. He pinned her arms tight. He opened his mouth wide, and two long fangs dropped down from the roof of his mouth. Validus could see dark slits from where they dropped. Mr. Jurgins’s jaw sagged lower than Validus would have thought possible and then the door flew open and banged against the wall, and Alex was standing there, breathless. “Mr. Jurgins,” he said. “Come quick. There’s a fight. The principal is asking for you.”
The thing holding Validus snapped its mouth shut and was Mr. Jurgins again. He unfolded himself and took long strides out the door, but not before giving Validus a look of pure hatred. “We’ll finish our business later,” he growled. Then he brushed past Alex and was gone.
“C’mon, Val, we have to get out of here before he finds out I lied.”
Alex pushed Val’s jacket into her hands, and they went around the building the opposite way from Mr. Jurgins, headed for the far corners of the field, where teachers rarely visited. They sat down against the school sign.
Validus shuddered. “Did you see his fangs, Alex?” Alex shook his head, so she told him everything that had happened. “I’m not going back in there. You shouldn’t either.” She thought for a minute. “No one should go back in there.”
Alex shrugged. “We can’t skip class. He’ll just call the principal, and then we’ll get in trouble before he eats us.”
Validus noticed Apul. He was hard to miss with that great white mark down the center of his face. He was sprinting full speed around the blacktop, throwing his head so his long black hair whipped in the breeze. No one was chasing him or playing with him, he just seemed to be running for the sake of running. Then she saw Benjamin crouched next to a game of four square, as if she was about to spring into the middle of it, her green eyes following the movement of the ball. Suddenly she pounced, pinning the red rubber ball to the pavement. A cry rose from the four square kids, followed by shouting and pointing, and finally Benjamin crouched outside the square again, her eyes following the ball.
“Hey!” Alex said and jumped to his feet. “Apul, look out!” Validus scrambled up after him just in time to see Jeremy with a big stick, and two of his buddies were distracting Apul so Jeremy could trip him. It worked perfectly. Validus heard the smack of the stick against Apul’s shins, like the sound of a baseball bat hitting a ball. Apul fell to the ground and skidded across the pavement, and soon everyone was running.
Alex was halfway to Apul by the time Validus started moving, but Benjamin was faster than both of them. As Validus ran she saw Mr. Jurgins appear beside Apul. He caught Validus’s eye and smiled. Validus suspected Mr. Jurgins wasn’t planning to punish Jeremy. This was her chance to walk away from the whole thing. She could call her mom, tell her she had a temperature, and be home in no time. Or she could try to help the new kids and protect her classmates from Mr. Jurgins. She gulped and poured on more speed.