While Drake was explaining the new situation to Fletcher, his head still buzzing as he tried to believe it himself, his former tutor, a thousand miles north and a little east, was rubbing his eyes wearily as he finally completed the long round of introductions to all the officers, wizards and priests of the ten divisions guarding Bula Pass.

Resalintas had introduced himself in turn to his new commanding officer, Field Marshal Poll and was now almost ready to return to his tent for some well earned rest before the trials and exertions of the next day. First, though, there was one more thing he wanted to do. Something he'd been looking forward to with a well hidden but almost childlike eagerness ever since being told that he was coming here.

Leaving the Field Marshal's tent, he turned left rather than right and headed for a very special tent in the central, busiest part of the encampment, a tent guarded by a full division of Senn guards as well as by a dozen priests and five wizards. As he approached, he was pleased to see that the wariness and suspicion in the eyes of the latter was just as great as that of the senn guards themselves, to the extent that they might almost have received the same conditioning. Their hands went to their weapons as Resalintas approached, and the elderly priest saw the wizards preparing to cast spells. He nodded to himself in satisfaction. So long as none of them slipped up, it didn't look as though he would have to punish anyone today.

"Resalintas," he said to the priest in charge of the guard detail. A middle aged, powerfully built man who looked as though he could wrestle a bull to the ground. "I'd like to see it."

"A moment please, Sir," he replied.

Resalintas nodded. No matter that everyone in the camp had to have had his identity checked several times already, to make sure he wasn't a clay man. No-one, but no-one, got into that tent without having his identity checked again and the old priest gladly submitted himself to it, pleased that such stringent precautions were being taken.

The procedure had changed somewhat as more was learned of the clay man threat and as the shape changing monsters changed their tactics. Now that they no longer had to wear amulets of mind protection, a strip search was no longer necessary and the guard priest simply prayed for the Eyes of Samnos, a power that the God of War was able to grant to a select few of His priests and that was more or less equivalent to a wizard's magic sense. The priest granted this divine favour found himself able to see the flows of magic force generated by magic spells, and could consequently see if someone was wearing any magical artifacts or had had spells cast directly onto his body.

All the various protection and warding spells that wizards and priests wore as a matter of routine generated complicated nimbuses of light, and it took practice to identify the specific spell or artifact responsible for a particular nimbus. The younger priest had been trained to identify the characteristic halo pattern of a mind protection spell, though, and, had it been present, he would have been able to pick it out from the auras generated by the magical charge on his older colleague's sword and the scroll of wizard spells he was carrying in his pouch.

Satisfied, he then prayed for the additional boon of telepathy. He read the surface layers of the older priest's mind, searching for any trace of duplicity. Any hint that he wasn't who he claimed to be. He found none and stood aside. "Very good, Sir," he said, saluting. "You may enter."

"Thank you," replied the older priest. He returning the salute and ducked through the tent flap.

Inside, the tent was as large as a circus big top with a conical top held up by a central pole, and more priests and guards were standing patiently around the circular sides, on guard against any attempt by the Shadowwizards to teleport directly in. Resalintas gave them only a brief glance, though, as he marched with barely concealed eagerness towards the object they were guarding, standing on a wooden plinth just a few feet away from the central pillar.

It was only dimly lit in the tent despite the dozens of glowbottles hanging on ropes from the ceiling, but the Sceptre of Samnos seemed to glow by its own light, as though the holy power it contained were actually visible. The spiderweb thin strands of platinum that wound in intricate patterns around its golden shaft shone like silver moonlight. The yellow and white jewels clustered near its upper end looked almost like eyes, as if the Sceptre were a living thing, aware of its surroundings and warily watching everyone around it, and the golden griffin statuette poised in the act of leaping into flight from the top of the Sceptre was so lifelike that for one crazy moment the old priest thought that it actually was alive, that it was about to leap into the air and fly around inside the huge tent.

Resalintas cursed himself for the flight of fancy and for the lapse in mental discipline that had permitted it, but then the Sceptre of Samnos was enough to stir anyone's imagination. Legend had it that it had been fashioned by the hands of Samnos Himself shortly after his ascension to Godhood, and that He had personally handed it over to Preemus the Pious, the very first human worshipper of the God of Righteous Warfare, four thousand years before. Resalintas didn't know whether or not the old legend was true, but seeing the fabulous artifact in front of him now, separated from him by only a few feet of empty air, he was well able to believe it. At that moment, he was well able to believe anything.

Awe and wonder welled up in him, filling him so completely that he thought he would burst with it. He removed his helmet, putting it down on the floor beside him, drew his sword and went down on one knee, where he spent half an hour in earnest, impassioned prayer to the God of War, praying that he would prove worthy of the tremendous honour and responsibility that had been placed upon him. It seemed to him that the Sceptre glowed even more brightly as he did so, and that its jewel eyes were regarding him critically, measuring him up, but that was probably just his imagination.

The prayer finished, he stood again, sheathed his sword and put his helmet back on his head. He looked at the Sceptre and (he was now almost certain) the Sceptre looked back at him, like two old warriors who had been told that they would be fighting together for a while.

The old priest seemed to sense satisfaction and approval coming from the artifact, as though he'd been found worthy, both by Samnos and by the artifact itself, and he knew that it would now suffer his touch without protest, as it had suffered the touch of all the other priests who'd held it over the past few months. As it had suffered the touch of the young girl, the cleric of Caroli, who'd recovered it from the Maze in the first place. He wondered whether that young girl would ever have the slightest inkling of just how honoured she had been, and how she would be regarded as virtually a saint by the faith of Samnos in centuries to come.

He stepped forward, closing the last of the distance between himself and the Sceptre. He reached out a hand and touched it gingerly, a faint tingle racing up his old fingers, and then he grasped it properly and held it in both hands, his heart beating wildly in rapture, jubilation and awe.

☆ ☆ ☆

Lord Basil Konnen gasped with unfamiliar exertion was he led his twelve year old son Drusus up the tall spiral staircase that connected the moon city of Kronosia with the old Agglemonian observatory above it.

Both of them wore Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing, two of the six taken from the Tharians, and for the first time in their lives they walked without fear. They knew that no-one else in the city could have crossed through the vacuum filled park cavern and that they were, therefore, completely alone in the centre of the city. They'd left their escort of bodyguards at the airlock, where they would wait for them until they returned.

Young Drusus puffed in exhaustion as they laboured up the long staircase, but he made no complaint. At long last his father was beginning to let him in on some of the secrets by which he ruled his half of the city, and the boy was willing to endure any hardship in order to learn those secrets. How did he know so much about what was going on among his subjects, things he shouldn't possibly be able to know even with his extensive spy network and his ring of ESP? How was he able to suddenly appear in distant parts of the city without being seen in any of the corridor streets leading to it? And where did he get the strange, alien looking artifacts he sometimes produced to the amazement of the rest of the family? Cutlery, tools and objects of art made of a strange, silvery grey metal? His grandfather, the late Lord Pothos Konnen, had known all these secrets, and somewhere along the line he'd revealed them to his son Basil. Drusus had been waiting impatiently for two years now for his father to pass them on to him in turn, and his mind raced as he wondered what great revelation was waiting for him in these dusty, centuries deserted corridors.

The boy was feeling no joy or excitement at the prospect, though, but only a slow, simmering anger that he'd had to wait this long. I've been ready to take some of the responsibility for the ruling of this city for years now, he thought bitterly. In fact, I could take over completely right now! He's afraid of me, that's why he's been keeping me in the dark all this time. He knows I'd make a much better ruler than him. He'll probably try to keep me down, try to stop me from taking my rightful place as Emperor of Kronosia. I may have to take measures...

He thought about the bottle of poison he had hidden in a secret compartment under the floor in his bedchamber. The bottle he'd gotten from the grandmother of one of his personal servants, an old woman who'd known how to make all kinds of useful things from common everyday substances. A couple of drops of that poison in his dear father's bedtime drink, taken to him every evening by a maid who was the sister of another of his personal servants, and the illustrious reign of Lord Drusus Konnen would begin, in almost exactly the same way that Lord Basil's reign had begun twenty years before.

So young Drusus plotted and schemed, already ambitious way beyond his years, and he had no fear of his father's reading his mind with his ring of ESP because above his left breast he wore a Brooch of Mind Shielding, an old Agglemonian ornament that had once graced the evening gown of a rich noblewoman, proclaiming to the whole world that she was wealthy enough to afford magical protection and important enough that she had secrets to hide. It was nothing as sophisticated as the Amulets of Mind Protection worn by the Tharians, let alone the mental mask used by Malefactos. It merely created a barrier around the wearer's mind that only the most skilled or powerful mind reader could penetrate, or at least it would have if his father hadn't taken it some years earlier, replacing it with an exact copy that had no magical powers whatsoever.

Lord Basil smiled to himself as he gently caressed the surface of his son's mind with a tendril of magical mind reading energy and he congratulated himself on the fine job he'd made of raising such a devious and resourceful heir. One day you will make an excellent Emperor, he thought as they climbed the seemingly endless staircase. One day you will rule well indeed. Almost as well as me, perhaps, but not for a long, long time, my dear boy. Not until I am an old, old man, finally grown weary of the endless scheming and intrigues of ruling the vast Empire we will have.

Be patient, my son, and one day it will all be yours. Patience is another essential quality needed by a good ruler. Haven't I been patient, waiting all these years for someone to come to us from Tharia, bringing us these Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing, so that we can reclaim the centre of the city? Haven't I controlled myself manfully, controlling the raging frustration that threatened to overwhelm me whenever I thought about these necklaces on the wrong side of the park cavern, no near and yet so far away? The fact that we who came to Kronos as refugees were now effectively prisoners in a prison of our own creation? Haven't I remained calm and collected, even though we were trapped up here on this lifeless moon when we should have been down there, carving out a new Empire on the reborn Tharia? Yes, patience was needed above all other qualities. All things come to he who waits.

They finally reached the top of the staircase and stepped with relief into the room containing the shaft down to the old mines. They stopped for a few moments to catch their breaths and then went out through the room's other door.

Drusus stared in fascination at the door to the teleportation chamber. "What's that, Father?" he asked curiously. "I've never seen a door like that before."

"No," agreed Lord Basil. "It's the only door of its kind in all Kronos. On its other side is a teleportation cubicle that can take you back to Tharia."

"Tharia?" replied Drusus in puzzlement. "The fallen world? Why would anyone want to go there?"

"Our ancestors came from there, remember, and it was through that door that they came. And as for wanting to go there, well, you will see." He gave the door a tug, but it was still magically locked. "Unfortunately, however, the question of wanting to use the door is academic for now. It needs a key to open it, and we don't have it."

"Where is it, then?" asked Drusus. All of a sudden he wanted very badly to go through the door. There's no better way of making someone want to do something than to tell them that they can't.

"Either somewhere in the centre of the city, or else the Traldians have it," replied Lord Basil. "It doesn't matter which, since we'll have defeated the Traldians soon, and then we can search the whole city for it. I know exactly what it looks like, so it's just a matter of time before we find it. Be patient, my son. Tharia will be ours, and when I come to the end of my life it will be yours."

The boy's eyes gleamed with greed and ambition, but then darkened again as he remembered the legends of the fallen world. "But who'd want to rule a world of barbaric savages and crumbling ruins?" he asked doubtfully. "What's down there to rule?"

Lord Basil grinned knowingly. "Come with me," he said, and he led the way out of the room. They walked side by side down the corridor, the father with one arm around his son's shoulders, but then Drusus saw a window and ran over to it with a little shriek of excitement. "What's that?" he asked breathlessly.

Lord Basil stood behind him and looked over his head at the barren, rocky landscape. "That's the surface," he said. "The surface of Kronos. That's what our world looks like from the outside."

"The surface!" said the boy in fascination. "What's that black stuff up there?"

"That's the sky," explained his father patiently.

"Sky? What's that? What's it made of?"

Lord Basil considered several possible answers, and decided that it was too complicated a subject to go into there and then. "I'll explain it all later, when we've got more time." he said. "Come along now."

But Drusus wasn't ready to leave the window yet. He stood captivated by the view, by the knowledge that Kronos wasn't, after all, the whole universe. There was more, lots more, and even though the view was pretty depressing, being nothing more than broken, suncracked rocks, he was intelligent enough to see what it represented. It meant that there were other places. Places other than Kronosia. Tharia had been nothing more than a legend to him all his life, but all of a sudden he saw it as a real place, a place you could actually go to. We must get the key! he thought with determination. We must get it! We must!