There was a knock on the door, and Lord Rajus Traldia called for the visitor to enter.

     “I came at your command,” said General Patroclus as he closed the door behind him. He crossed the room and stood stiffly at attention behind Lord Rajus, who was standing with his back to the rest of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. Around them, the rest of the large common room was empty. A pair of burly guards were standing outside its only entrance to chase away the family members and senior servants who normally came there to relax. Read a book, enjoy a pleasant game of Klann or just sit and chat about the day’s events. Today, they were sent away grumbling to find somewhere else to spend their spare time. Lord Rajus wanted privacy.

     “Good to see you,” said Lord Rajus, turning to face him. “It is my hope that we can speak here in secrecy.”

     The General nodded. The Konnens had some way of spying on them, it had been obvious for some time. Too many of their plans had somehow become known to the enemy. They anticipated their every move, cut them off at every turn. They knew things that they had no business knowing!

     Patroclus shook his head in bafflement. “I would stake my very soul that we don't have a traitor,” he said. “I would trust every one of them with my life.”

     “As would I,” agreed the nobleman. “And if we start turning on each other, then we are truly doomed.”

     “You still think they have listening tubes, then? We have checked the walls around the briefing room again and again. No secret tunnels have been dug behind them, as if that kind of endeavour could be carried out in perfect silence.”

     “The old wizards were said to be able to disintegrate tunnels through rock in silence,” said the nobleman, “but no. I agree with you that any secret tunnel would have been found. No, they have some other way of listening in on us. Some magical, device, I think.”

     “But you don't think they cannot overhear us here?” asked the General.

     His Lordship shrugged. “It’s possible,” he admitted, “but if they can hear us here, they can hear us anywhere. So, let’s start with an update on the war situation. How’s it going out there?”

     “We are holding the fourth corridor and marshalling our forces for a massive counter offensive. I am confident that by the end of the week...”

     “The truth, Canta,” interrupted Lord Rajus with a fond smile. “Give me the truth. How’s it really going?”

     The General regarded his master carefully for a moment, then nodded. “Badly,” he admitted. “House Leto is preparing to surrender, handing over all its men and territory to the Konnens. House Traldia will then find itself on the front line, with five of the other Houses allied against us. Even without their wizards, they will have no difficulty in gradually wearing us down. I’m afraid that our eventual defeat is inevitable.”

     Lord Rajus looked grave. The General saw that he'd already figured it out for himself and had been hoping desperately that he'd been wrong. "It's those damned wizards of theirs!” he said angrily. “Years of stalemate and then they show up!”

     “Yes, the wizards,” agreed Lord Rajus. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Where do you suppose they came from?”

     “The story is that they’re renegades, captured by a routine Konnen patrol,” replied the General. “Our spies tell us that they're part of a group of six, two of whom are young men of no particular talent and can be ignored. One of them, though, if our information is correct, is a healer.”

     “A healer?” asked Lord Rajus with interest.

     “A worshipper of Caroli, the old Goddess of Healing, or so she claims,” replied the General. “Our informant tells us that she is genuinely able to heal. He claims to have seen her healing men who were minutes away from death, so that they were able to get up and go straight back on duty.”

     Lord Rajus nodded. “That is possible,” he said thoughtfully. “We know that such people existed in the past, and the Gods they worshipped presumably still exist, unless all our histories are nothing more than a collection of myths and legends. The wizards, however, are a different matter. A man or woman can turn to the Gods by themselves, with no help from anybody. All you need is faith. A wizard, on the other hand, can only be taught by another wizard. Once the chain is broken, it can never be reforged, and there have been no wizards on Kronos since the disaster over a century ago.”

     “Maybe they found an old spellbook, learned how to read it,” suggested Patroclus.

     Lord Rajus shook his head. “No. In the entire history of wizardry, there is not one reliable account of a self taught wizard. Not one! No, if they are genuine wizards, and I think they are considering what they’ve done, then they must have been taught by another wizard.”

     “But if there have been no wizards on Kronos for over a hundred years...”

     “Then they must have come from somewhere else,” finished Lord Rajus. He looked up at the General to see his reaction.

     “Somewhere else?” said Patroclus doubtfully. For someone who’d spent his entire life in an underground city, the idea of there being ‘somewhere else’ was a hard one to grasp. “But where? There isn’t anywhere else! Kronosia is the only place where any form of civilization survives.”

     Lord Rajus smiled patiently. “There is only one possible place they could have come from. Tharia.”

     “Tharia? The fallen world?”

     “It is my belief that the fallen world has risen once more. And why so surprised, my old friend? We always knew, or at least hoped, that civilisation would rise again on Tharia one day. That was, after all, the whole idea behind our ancestors coming here in the first place. To build a self contained world where we could wait out the centuries with our way of life intact so that we could return and rebuild Agglemon when civilization on Tharia had risen again. It was no part of our ancestors’ plan that we should remain up here until the end of time.”

     Patroclus was overawed. He had to agree with his Lordship’s logic, and the idea left him feeling a little dazed. “You mean there are cities down there again?” he said breathlessly. “Cities open to the sky, with tall towers and high bridges bathed in golden sunlight and cooled by soft winds, like in the old stories?”

     Lord Rajus was amused. He’d never imagined that the huge, battlescarred warrior had a poetic streak. “I’m sure of it,” he replied, “and the Konnens want to gain possession of them.”

     “What?” growled the General, his eyes narrowing to slits.

     “When the Konnens have conquered and united the whole city, they will have gained possession of all the wealth and treasure brought up here by the eight noble Houses three hundred years ago. Civilization of some kind may have returned to Tharia, but it cannot begin to rival the majesty and glory of the old Agglemonian Empire. With the wealth they will have in their possession, the Konnens will be able to buy entire kingdoms while we will be left penniless paupers knocking at the gate.”

     “They plan to steal our birthright, cheat us of our rightful place in the reborn Empire,” said Patroclus angrily, his hand straying unconsciously to the hilt of his sword. “They would steal the wealth that our ancestors gave us in trust to secure our future.” Then he remembered the battle report that he’d delivered only minutes before and he slumped again in despair. “And there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

     “Maybe there is,” said Lord Rajus, however. “They haven’t won yet. They still need one more thing before they can claim complete victory, before they can return to Tharia in triumph. They need this.”

     He reached up to a nearby shelf on which a number of decorative ornaments were standing and took down one that the General couldn’t remember having seen there before. It looked a little like a relay runner’s baton and had apparently been carved from a long, straight section of a bull’s horn. Its outer cylindrical surface had been smoothed and polished to an ivory white mirror finish and a series of criss crossing spiral lines had been carved in it. A ring of seven pink gemstones had been set around one end, and the other had three strips of silver running around it.

     “What is it?” asked Patroclus doubtfully.

     “A key,” replied Lord Rajus. “The key to the teleportation chamber linking Kronos and Tharia. When our ancestors first came here, fleeing the anarchy that was destroying the Empire, they feared that angry mobs or tribes of humanoids would follow them up here, so they cast a locking spell on the door to the teleportation chamber, ensuring that only someone with the proper key could use it. Without the key, no-one on Tharia can come up here, unless they’re wizards able to teleport under their own power. More importantly from our point of view, no-one up here can go back to Tharia.”

     “Ah!” said the General, smiling in understanding. Then he frowned. “But when the Konnens win the war and occupy our territories, they’ll just take the key.”

     “Not if they don’t know where it is,” replied the nobleman. “That’s where you come in. I want you to take this key down into the caverns, deep down where the Konnens will never find it. Then, I’ll be in a much stronger position to deal with them. We’ll be able to negotiate a settlement equitable to both of us. Either that, or they’ll be trapped up here for the rest of eternity, and much good will all their treasure do them then!”

     “A brilliant plan, my Lord!” said Patroclus in delight. “A move worthy of your father.”

     “Thank you,” replied Lord Rajus. “The important thing, though, is that you tell no-one where you are going. Even I must not know. Lord Basil has a Ring of ESP, as you know, and if I knew where you were, he could read the information right out of my mind.”

     He took another object down from the shelf. A coronet made of silver and gold with a single ruby that, when worn, fitted in the middle of the forehead. “This is a Coronet of Farspeaking. With it, you’ll be able to talk to me even though we’re miles apart. I want you to get in touch with me once a day, so that when we and the Konnens arrive at a settlement, I can order you to return. The coronet will also tell you if I’m talking under duress, in which case you will, of course, ignore anything I say. Is that understood?”

     “Perfectly, my Lord,” replied the General, accepting the coronet. Neither of them knew the effect that miles of solid rock had on communication spells.

     “Take a dozen men with you,” said the nobleman. “We’ll carry on fighting for another two or three days, long enough for you and your men to get far away, and then we’ll give the Konnens our ultimatum. I’ll let you go now, since you’ll have preparations to make. You leave in the morning.”

     “Yes, my Lord!” said Patroclus, now full of enthusiasm. “I won’t let you down.”

     “I know you won’t, my old friend,” replied Lord Rajus. He reached out to shake his hand. “Good luck.”

     The General nodded, then marched out to make preparations for his departure, feeling much better and more optimistic than when he’d come in.