"What are those white, shiny things up there?" asked Drusus eagerly.

"They're called stars," replied Lord Basil. And if you're so overwhelmed by the sight of the surface, just wait until I tell you what stars are. Not yet, though. One day you will know everything. One day you will know the true size and nature of the universe, but not yet. Not until you're ready. One little bit at a time, my son. He took him by the elbow and pulled him gently but firmly away from the window.

A moment later, though, they reached the observation room and saw another, far larger window in front of them; a window with exactly the same view except for the planet looming on the horizon. The mind numbingly beautiful, three quarters full blue and white globe of Tharia. Drusus stood frozen like a statue, his mouth hanging open and his eyes staring, and it was several minutes before he was able to gasp out a few words. "Is, is that it?" he said in a trembling, awestruck voice.

"Yes," confirmed Lord Basil. "That's Tharia, the fallen world." He was also staring, only a little less awestruck than his son. Seeing it in his secret scrying mirror was one thing, but to see it like this, with his own eyes... "If we were to walk a little way in that direction, we'd be able to see all of it, like a great ball floating above us, and if you were standing on the surface of Tharia and looking up, you'd see Kronos, our world, floating like a ball in the sky."

"Like a great ball in space," said Drusus in fascination. "How big is space?"

Lord Basil laughed to disguise the fact that he didn't know the answer to that question. Then he said "Remember you wanted to know why anyone would want to rule a world of, how did you put it, cannibals, savages and ruins?" Drusus nodded. "Well, have a look at this."

He went over to the Lens of Farseeing wiped clean of dust by the Tharians and sat down on the cracked leather seat. He took a moment to remember the description of the lenses he'd found in some of the old family archives, along with the Instructions for using them, and then he manipulated the wheels and levers on the framework until the lens showed a suitable scene. He then stood again and indicated that the boy take his place.

Drusus winced as the protruding framework of the chair dug painfully into his buttocks and thighs, but the discomfort was instantly forgotten when he saw the scene in front of him.

There, in the lens, was the image of a city, a city vast beyond comprehension. A city in which crowds of people more numerous than the young boy could imagine milled around under the open sky. They thronged along narrow streets and alleyways between buildings of brick and stone, some of them as large as the Konnen mansion and towering three or four storeys above the ground, fluttering with brightly coloured flags and pennants and with striped canopies shading their doorways. The people were dressed in outrageous costumes and uniforms in every colour imaginable. Their skins were the colour of freshly baked bread as if they'd just been taken out of an oven, and some of them were leading horrible monsters, creatures he knew only from myths and legends. Horses, donkeys, camels and goats.

"What is it?" gasped Drusus, his eyes like saucers and his mind close to overload with all the new things he was being shown. "What is it?"

"A city," replied his father. "A real city, not some pathetic little refugee camp which is all Kronosia really is. A real city, with as many as a hundred thousand people living in it. A hundred thousand people, my son. Can you imagine that? Twenty times as many as live up here in Kronosia."

Drusus looked back at the scene, trying to imagine it.

"What's more," continued Lord Basil, "that's just one city, one of many. There are hundreds of cities down there, Drusus. Hundreds, and many of them are even larger than that one. The fallen world has risen again."

"Hundreds of cities," breathed Drusus softly, his eyes beginning to gleam with greed again. "Hundreds, just like that one?"

Lord Basil nodded in reply, pleased by his son's ambition and lust for power.

Suddenly, however, the boy's greed vanished, to be replaced by doubt and uncertainty as a thought struck him. "But there are so few of us," he said fearfully. "Even if the Traldians were to pledge their allegiance to us, there'd still be only five thousand of us, and my teachers say there can't possibly be more than ten thousand moon trogs. And that's without considering the casualties we're bound to suffer while uniting all the peoples of Kronos. How can we possibly conquer a city with twenty times our population?"

"We won't have to conquer the first couple of cities," replied Lord Basil with a shrewd smile. "Remember the treasure rooms? All the gold, jewels, works of art, enough to fill three rooms in our mansion alone, never mind the treasures possessed by the other houses, all of which will be ours when we unite the city. The accumulated wealth of eight of the wealthiest families of the old Empire, all that was left after financing the creation of Kronosia. It means nothing to us, of course, since the Lifegiver supplies all our needs and it's by controlling the pantrys that we maintain our hold on power, but down there, on Tharia, it would be wealth beyond imagination. Wealth beyond the dreams of Kings. We will buy our first city, my son. That very city there, perhaps. We will buy the entire city and everyone in it, maybe two cities if the treasure stretches that far, and once we have that many people to work with, we'll be able to raise an army. An army of every able bodied man within a hundred miles."

Lord Basil was no longer speaking to his son. He was speaking to himself, and there was a manic gleam of madness in his eyes, the madness of having spent his entire life as one of the very few people in Kronosia to have known that Tharia had risen again, and that it was totally beyond their reach. Now, though, they were on the verge of gaining their freedom and the euphoria of anticipation was close to tipping him over the edge.

"Ten years from now, we'll be ready to march on a third city, and when we've consolidated and subdued it, recruited its citizens to swell our army, we'll march on a fourth, and a fifth. By the time you take over from me you'll be inheriting a kingdom of a million people, and you, and your son after you, will build an Empire. Agglemon will be reborn. The Empire of Agglemon will rise again!"

"If we win all our battles," said Drusus doubtfully. "If we win every war."

"Oh we will," said Lord Basil, nodding knowingly, his eyes still glittering with incipient madness. "We will. You see, we have a couple of secret weapons. Magical weapons created by the immortal wizards and used in the Mage Wars. Weapons that were overlooked during the massacre of the mages that followed and that passed through many hands during the next few centuries, eventually falling into the hands of Alabaster Konnen, one of our most illustrious ancestors.

"He had no idea what they were, of course, prizing them merely because of the jewels and precious metals they were made of. He just chucked them into his treasure room and forgot about them. His grandson, William Konnen, dabbled a bit in magic, though , and he recognised them for what they were. He used them to gain power for himself and for House Konnen, so successfully that he was able to place his son, Theodore, on the Imperial throne itself. The man who would become known to history as the Emperor Tar Klaffin."

He paused as he thought back to the very pinnacle of House Konnen's history, the pinnacle they had managed to retain for three generations and which, soon now, they would reach again, except that this time they would not be overthrown by any upstart cousin. This time, the Konnens would rule for ten thousand years!

"But if we had weapons that powerful, how was the throne taken away from us?" asked Drusus. "Why didn't we always rule the Empire?"

Lord Basil smiled down at him. "Powerful magical weapons are fine for gaining power," he said, "but if you want to stay in power you need more than that. You need intelligence, ruthlessness. The ability to judge the true loyalties of the people around you. In short, you need leadership ability. You can't rule simply by blasting your enemies with fabulous magical weapons, more's the pity. For a start, you need to be able to tell who your enemies are. Once Theodore was on the throne, therefore, he no longer needed the weapons and they were put back in the treasure room and forgotten.

"He must have intended to tell his son about them, but both he and his father were killed during a dragon hunt that went terribly wrong so that his son and grandson never knew about them. Never knew that two beautiful and valuable but otherwise unexceptional looking pieces of jewelry were, in fact, among the most powerful weapons ever to be created by the hand of man. It was just sheer luck that they were among the relatively small portion of our family fortune that wasn't sold for the construction of Kronosia, and even more luck that the books and scrolls that told the truth about them were among those we brought up here with us, in the House library. It wasn't until after the disaster that their true nature was discovered once more, and by then they were out of reach, in the centre of the city. Now, though, they are once more available to us, and with them we will win every battle we need to win." He smiled down at his son again. "We don't ever need to worry about losing a battle, have no fear of that."

"Then we can use them to defeat the Traldians and the moon trogs," said Drusus excitedly. "We can unite the city right away!"

Lord Basil laughed out loud. "If you use them up here, you'll unite the city all right. You'll unite us all in death. They were never meant to be used in confined spaces. Only down there..." He pointed at the cloud wreathed hemisphere of Tharia through the window. "Only down there, in the green fields and under the blue sky, can they be used safely, and even then great care has to be taken to see that their power doesn't blow back on the person using them.

"We don't need to worry about that, though. The coming of our visitors from Tharia proves that we are meant to rebuild Agglemon, that it is our destiny. All my life I thought that my lot would be no different from that of any of my ancestors during the three hundred years we've been stuck up here. That I would rule for a while, have a few totally insignificant wars with the other Houses, and eventually die or abdicate up here, passing on to you this mighty empire of one mansion and a few hundred subjects. I was resigned to that, but then the Tharians came and suddenly it all became clear to me. Agglemon would be reborn. Not generations from now, by which time I would have been totally forgotten, but right now, in my own lifetime. I will be the first Emperor of New Agglemon. Not some far distant descendant, but me, Lord Basil Konnen. Tar Basil, Emperor of humanity!"

The gleam of madness was back in his eyes, and he stared out through the long window at an imaginary scene that unfolded in front of him. A scene in which vast crowds of cheering people waved flags and threw flowers as the Emperor Tar Basil rode slowly past in an eye dazzling carriage of silver and gold. A carriage that led a long procession of gloriously uniformed mounted soldiers. It will be, he knew. He knew it without the slightest shadow of a doubt. It will be, and may the Gods have mercy on anyone who tries to stop me.

"What's that?" asked Drusus suddenly.

Lord Basil was momentarily furious with him for interrupting his daydream. The anger passed almost immediately, though. There was no way he could remain angry with his son for long, no matter what he did, because he was the future of House Konnen and without him it would all be pointless. "What's what?" he asked therefore, calm and controlled once more.

Drusus was staring out through the long window, and he pointed at the planet Tharia, at the great white blotch that covered the central part of the continent facing them. "That big white patch there! It looks as if someone's spilled cream on the land."

"Oh, that," said Lord Basil dismissively. "It's called the Shadow. It's some kind of magical protection created by the people who live there now. They're at war with just about everyone around them, which was rather careless of them. The first rule of conquest is that you only make one enemy at a time, or they'll all gang up on you. They've made some gains, but it's only a matter of time before they're defeated and destroyed."

"Tell me more about them," demanded Drusus.

"I can't, I'm afraid," replied his father. "We can't see through the Shadow, so all we can observe about them are their battle tactics. The heads of our guests are full of a lot of nonsense about them all being demons and zombies. You have to admire the effectiveness of their propaganda machine, at the very least. From our point of view, though, it doesn't really matter who wins the war. We can buy a city that's just been conquered as easily as one that's just fought off its attackers. In fact, a city ravaged by war would almost certainly be cheaper to buy, and there would be other benefits as well. The wealth we bring to them would help them rebuild their city and we'd be welcomed as saviours and heroes. Would you like to be a saviour and a hero, Drusus?"

The boy snickered in amusement, still staring at the glorious planet.

"Yes indeed," added Lord Basil as his son went back to looking down on Tharia through the lens. "That war down there may well be the best thing that's ever happened to us."