“Traitors! Traitors! Ungrateful dogs!”

     Lord Basil stormed furiously as he strode down the mansion’s main ground floor corridor. Around him, servants and junior family members quaked in fear and fled out of his sight.

     “After all I’ve done for them! All the sacrifices I’ve made for them! The whole city’s turned against me! Every single last one of them! Guards! Guards! I’ll have them put to death! I’ll have the whole damned city put to death! Where in the name of Hell are my guards?”

     “They’re gone,” replied Silus Vart, appearing from another corridor. “Fled into the caverns to join the renegades. They heard that the mob was dragging people out of their beds and murdering them and decided not to wait for the same thing to happen to them.”

     “They abandoned me?” cried the Nobleman in disbelief. “All of them? I don’t believe it, you’re lying to me! They’re supposed to protect me! Why are you lying?”

     “I’m not lying,” replied the advisor. “There's only a handful of people left in the mansion. Most of the maids and servants have joined the mob and most of the family are hiding in their rooms, afraid to come out.”

     “Liar!” screamed the Nobleman in insane rage and terror. “Liar!”

     He drew a dagger and struck him down before the advisor even had a chance to show surprise and his corpse fell to the floor with a heavy thump. “Teach you to lie to me! Drusus! Drusus! Where are you?”

     He ran madly from room to room, finding the occasional family member cowering in terror under a bed or in a wardrobe, but there was no sign of his son. “Drusus! Not you too! Please don’t say you’ve abandoned me as well!” He came upon his mother in the main banqueting hall, busily arranging flowers in a vase and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Mother! Have you seen Drusus?”

     “He’s in the creche,” replied Lady Emilia, smiling in contentment. “Nurse just finished feeding him. She tells me he’s just cut his first tooth! Gods but it’s making her sore!” She laughed happily, lost in her own little world.

     “He’s twelve years old!” screamed Lord Basil in helpless frustration and ran frantically back out into the corridor. “Drusus! Drusus!”

     “Yes father?” replied the boy, emerging from the library and staring at him in concern.

     “Drusus!” gasped the Nobleman, running over to him and embracing him. “I thought you’d left me as well, like everybody else.”

     “Never,” replied the boy. “I’d never leave you. What are we going to do?”

     “They’ve all turned against me,” said Lord Basil, putting an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “The whole city. But I’ll teach them. I’ll show them what it means to betray a Konnen. Come with me.”

     He led the way to the other end of the mansion, to the treasure rooms, normally guarded at all times by soldiers who wouldn’t let anyone within a dozen yards of them. Now, though, the corridor was empty and the Nobleman gave another cry of fury as he unlocked the first door with a key he took from a pocket.

     A Tharian would have been struck speechless by the contents of the room, enough wealth to buy a crown or ransom a king, but the two Konnens gave it scarcely a glance as Lord Basil went straight over to the pair of boxes lying in the corner, next to a group of golden statuettes.

     “The magic weapons!” gasped Drusus as his father opened one of the boxes.

     “Correct,” replied the Nobleman as he carefully lifted out a giant ram’s horn, two feet across and making two complete spirals. A Tharian who saw it would have been awestruck by the sight of it, and by the size of the ram it must have come from. It had been polished to an ivory finish, decorated with bands of silver and gold on which runes and sigils had been inscribed, and it had a mouthpiece in the small end. Even an ordinary ram’s horn that size would have produced a note that would have burst a man’s eardrums when blown. The Gods alone knew what this one would do.

     “I’ll teach them a lesson they won’t forget!” he said with a wicked, gleeful, insane grin.

     “But you said the magic weapons would kill everyone if they were used here,” protested Drusus fearfully.

     “True,” agreed Lord Basil, “but we’ve got nothing to lose. They plan to see me hanging from a scaffold. You too. I won’t give them the satisfaction. This way we all go to damnation together. The whole city! Nobody betrays a Konnen and lives. Nobody!”

      “But, but...” Stammered Drusus helplessly. “But I’ll die too!”

     “A Konnen knows how to die bravely, son,” said Lord Basil with a compassionate hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be quick and painless, I promise you. Not like you’d suffer if the mob got you.”

     “But I don’t want to die at all!”

     “There’s no other way, my son. Believe me, if there were any other way...”

     “There is another way!” cried Drusus, desperately hanging onto his father’s elbow. “We can escape back to Tharia, through the teleportation cubicle.”

     “It’s locked,” explained Lord Basil patiently. “The Traldians had the key and lost it in the caverns. The Tharians have it now, may their souls rot for all eternity.”

     “No, it’s open!” cried the boy. “The door’s open! I’ve been through it! I’ve been to Tharia!”

     “What?” declared the Nobleman doubtfully.

     “It’s true, I swear it! We can go back to Tharia, just as we always planned to do. We can take the treasure with us, buy a city and rebuild the Empire. Your dream can still come true.”

     Lord Basil looked deeply into his son’s eyes and saw that he was speaking the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he demanded.

     “I, er, I forgot,” stammered the boy in embarrassment.

     “Liar,” said the Nobleman. “You thought you could use the information to your own advantage.” He laughed and tousled the boy’s hair. “You’re a chip off the old block all right. Now this is what I want you to do. Find everyone who’s still in the mansion and bring them here. I’ll get mother. Understand?”

     “Yes father,” said Drusus in relief, and he ran off to obey.

     A few minutes later there were half a dozen people gathered outside the treasure rooms. Lord Basil himself, his mother, his son, an uncle and two cousins. “What’s this all about, Basil?” demanded one of the cousins, a beautiful, dark haired woman in her early twenties.

     “We’re going back to Tharia,” replied the Nobleman. “The door’s open, and if we stay here we’ll be dancing from a scaffold within the hour. I want each of you to carry as much treasure as you can.”

     “You’re proposing that we walk openly through the city to the airlocks?” demanded the woman in exasperation. “They’re out in the forecourt now, hammering on the doors!”

     “There’s another way, through the old mines under the city. Some parts are in vacuum, so we’ll need to wear these.” He began handing out Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing.

     “Oh lovely!” declared Lady Emilia as she took hers. “Is it my birthday?”

     “Yes, mother. It’s your birthday,” agreed Lord Basil as he placed it around her neck.

     “Why are we taking her?” asked the woman bitterly. “The senile old trout’ll only slow us down!”

     “Be careful what you say, Tessa,” warned the Nobleman, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “We may decide not to take you.” The woman’s face paled with fear and she said nothing more.

     Lord Basil then ordered them to fill their pockets with as much treasure as they could carry. Rubies and diamonds mostly, as they wanted the most value for the least weight. The three men took two magic swords each and Tessa slung a magic bow and a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. Lord Basil dressed his mother in a Robe of Invulnerability, Boots of Striding, Bracers of Giant Strength, a Cape of Levitation and a Helm of Farseeing, all of which he planned to use himself when they were established on Tharia. Drusus carried a chest containing assorted potions and scrolls and the Nobleman himself picked up the two boxes containing the magic weapons of mass destruction. Altogether, they were carrying enough wealth to make a Haldornian prince envious and enough magic to send an immortal wizard fleeing in terror, but the Nobleman still cast a regretful glance back at all the treasure they were forced to leave behind.

     “All right then,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s go.”

     The mansion had a back exit leading out into the caverns; a massive steel door that hadn’t been opened in two centuries, but Lord Basil produced a six inch long key, inserted it into the lock and turned it. The lock was stiff after such a long period of neglect and the hinges were badly corroded, but after a good deal of puffing and straining the three men finally got the door open and then they hurried out into the passage beyond. From somewhere in the mansion came the sound of hundreds of people running and shouting, things being broken, doors being kicked in, so Lord Basil pulled the door shut again and locked it before deliberately breaking the key in the lock with a blow from his boot. Now no-one could follow them. They were safe.

     Half an hour later they were in the observatory and the Nobleman was trying to suppress a nagging worry that his son had been wrong and the door still locked. It was with considerable relief, therefore, that he pulled the door open and peered into the teleportation chamber beyond. “Everybody inside,” he commanded.

     “Where does it go?” asked Tessa apprehensively.

     “Just get in!” ordered the Nobleman impatiently. “I’ll explain everything later!”

     They got in and Lord Basil closed the door. Then he turned and opened the other door in the room’s far wall.

     “See?” said Drusus jubilantly as they filed out into Grand Central. “I told you!”

     Lord Basil patted him fondly on the head, then turned his attention back to the teleportation cubicle. The spring loaded door was closing itself, ready for the next person to follow them from Kromos, but the nobleman folded a silk handkerchief into a small square and inserted it into the gap between door and frame. The door closed on it and held it in place, and the small scrap of fabric prevented it from closing all the way.

     “What are you doing?” asked the boy curiously.

     “Just making sure no-one can follow us,” replied the Nobleman with a gleeful grin. “So long as this door’s open, no-one on Kronos can use the teleportation chamber to come back here.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if he could see right through it to the tiny moon, speeding across the sky above them. “They all turned against me, so they can rot up there for the rest of eternity. Teach them to betray a Konnen!”

     He remained there for a few moments longer, savouring the moment, and then began examining the other doors. It took them several hours, but eventually they found the one that Angus and Douglas had re-opened and emerged into a world beyond their wildest imaginations.