They had so expected to see buildings and wizards and green fields on the other side of the door that it took a moment for the stark bare corridor that greeted them to register on their consciousness.

     "What the Hell..." began Thomas.

     For once it was Matthew who was first to realise the truth. "Of course!" he said, chuckling with relief. "Grand Central."

     "Grand Central, of course," agreed the wizard, relaxing as the brief moment of panic faded away. "I should have known we'd come here first. I should have remembered."

     "Why?" asked Stone in confusion. "Where are we? What's Grand Central?"

     "The centre of the Agglemonian teleportation network," replied Thomas, staring around in wonder. "A central nexus that allows you to go from any point in the Empire to any other. Me and Matt've been here before, in our own time. It was all in ruins then, of course, and only a handful of the cubicles still worked. I don't recognise this corridor, though. I thought we'd explored them all, looking for a way out."

     "This area is probably reserved for wizards only," said Matthew, and Thomas was astonished to hear the edge of bitterness in his voice. "Can't have mere mundanes getting into the Towers of Sorcery. Who knows what they might do."

     Looking around, Thomas saw that his friend was right. The short stretch of corridor they were in had three doors on either side, each with the name of a city engraved above it. Another door at the end had the word 'Lexandria' carved in impressive, ornate lettering. That was the door they wanted. Thomas found his eyes drawn to the other end of the corridor, though, where another corridor crossed theirs. Sounds were drifting in from it; the sounds of people talking and strolling lazily from one door to another. As they watched, a man and a woman walked past, members of a noble house by the look of them. The four visitors from the future must have been plainly visible to them, but the couple walked past without a glance in their direction. Are we that uninteresting? thought Thomas curiously. He found himself walking in their direction.

     "Hey!" called Matthew, running to catch up with him. "We should be going that way!"

     Thomas ignored him and carried on walking until he reached the junction with the cross corridor. He could sense magic, over and above the background clamour of so many teleportation cubicles so close together. There was magic of some kind guarding the entrance to the corridor they were in.

     He crossed the threshold and looked back. There was nothing but a wall of rock where he'd just come from. "Matt?" he called.

     "What are you doing?"

     "Can you see me?"

     "Of course I can see you! What are you on about?"

     "Come here," said the wizard, holding a hand out.

     There was a pause, and then Matthew's hand and arm emerged from the stone wall, followed by the rest of him. "Now what... Oh. An illusion, eh?"

     "Yeah, and I bet this is the extreme edge of Grand Central as well, where people seldom come. No doubt someone blunders across it now and then. They probably just wipe his memory and send him back."

     He looked down the corridor. It extended for over a hundred yards and had other corridors crossing it at intervals. There were doors in every wall, spaced every dozen feet or so, from which people came and went, all of them expensively dressed even by Agglemonian standards. Only the upper crust, it seemed, used the teleportation network. They must charge a small fortune or its use, he thought, unless you're a wizard or lucky enough to be in the company of one.

     "One of those doors goes down to the Underworld," mused the wizard dreamily, "and another goes up to Kronos. And above us..."

     "We don't know what's above us," pointed out Matthew. "We speculated that Grand Central was right under Arnor, but that was never more than just a guess."

     "Well, now we've got the chance to see for ourselves," said Thomas excitedly. "Think of it, Matt! Ours will be the first eyes to see the Golden City for three hundred years! We'll be seeing it at the very height of its glory and splendour! We can't go without having a look! We just can't!"

     "Think again," said Matthew, however. "Look at those people. They're all princes and dukes. Top nobs. Scum like us aren't allowed down here. Suppose we go up to have a look at Arnor, then find a bunch of burly guards who won't let us down here again."

     "They'll let me in," insisted Thomas, "and you're with me. They won't turn a wizard away, not in this day and age."

     "Are you willing to take that chance?" asked the soldier coldly.

     Thomas stared at him, almost pleadingly, like a small child begging his parents for a new toy, but then he nodded reluctantly. "You're right," he said, "and we're here on serious business, not a sight seeing holiday." He stared longingly down the corridor one last time, though, before turning and following Matthew back through the illusory wall.

     They entered the cubicle with the word 'Lexandria' above its door and closed it behind them. Matthew stood aside to let Thomas open the second door and lead the way out. They didn't know what would be waiting for them on the other side, except that there would be a lot of wizards, so they both concluded, without a word being spoken, that it was best for the wizard to go through first.

     They were to be disappointed again, though. The door led into a circular chamber carved out of the living rock. There appeared to be no exit except back the way they'd come. The four men stared at each other in bafflement. "Now what?" asked Stone.

     "Another illusory stone wall?" suggested Matthew. "To deter unwelcome visitors?"

     "I don't think so," said the wizard. "I don't sense any magic here. I think this place is precisely what it appears to be. A chamber carved out deep underground. I would imagine..." He broke off, his head cocked as if listening to something. "Magic," he said, spinning around. "Coming from over there."

     Matthew looked in the indicated direction and saw a door that hadn't been there a moment before. It opened and a man emerged; a man wearing the ancient costume of long black robes and pointy hat. Around his neck hung a chunky gold pendant that sat halfway down his chest. Each link in the chain was in the shape of a pair of manacles and the pendant itself was a heavy portcullis; the ancient symbol of the proctors, long since fallen into disuse in Thomas's time. The proctor dismissed the three soldiers with a glance, then turned to Thomas.

     "Welcome back to Lexandria," he said. "Your name and date of graduation, if you please."

     The gatekeeper of the Mala tower might have sent word that he was coming, so Thomas gave the same answer. "Saffire. Class of '98."

     The proctor scowled at him. "Your true name, if you please. There is no place for professional names in the University."

     Another thing that had changed over the past thousand years. Thomas cursed silently and told him, wondering how long it would take them to find that no person of that name had graduated in that year. Oh well, better just play it by ear, he thought. Whatever happens, happens.

     The proctor looked at him. "Thomas Gown? I have a message for you from a certain Seskip Tonn, who passed this way yesterday. You are to return to the ship immediately and wait for him there, and you had better have a bloody good reason for wandering off. I've seen that type before. If I were you, I'd run to the furthest corner of the Empire and pray he never finds you." He turned thoughtful. "Pity we didn't spot him earlier. With the right training, he'd have made a good proctor."

     Thomas paled with fear but stood his ground. "I'll do as he says, but first I have to consult the archives." He indicated the door. "This leads to the University?"

     "Where else would it lead?" replied the proctor. "You'll need to speak to Hal Tamil, the keeper of the archives. He'll point you in the right direction." He glared suspiciously at the soldiers. "Are these... people with you?"

     "Yes, I know, I'm responsible for their conduct. They're not shologs, you know. They're not going to run amok."

     "It's their safety I'm thinking of. If they get in someone's way, you might be taking three frogs back to your ship with you. Very well, you may proceed." He stood aside and gestured to the door.

     Thomas entered cautiously, followed even more cautiously by the soldiers. Beyond the door was a tunnel of shifting light that writhed and contorted around them, although the surface they were walking on seemed solid and stable. A transdimensional tunnel, Thomas recognised. Unusual to use one to connect two places in the same plane of existence. He glanced over his shoulder to see how the soldiers were taking it. They weren't happy, especially the two younger men, but Thomas's calm acceptance of the phenomenon gave them the courage and confidence to go on. Seeing it gave Thomas a strange feeling of pride. They're following me, he thought. Accepting my leadership. Even Matthew, who's accustomed to leading men himself, although in his case it's because he's my friend. Because he trusts me. That brought him back to earth with a shock. Gods, don't let me betray that trust! he prayed.

     The tunnel came to an end after about fifty yards. Another door stood in front of them, and passing through it they finally found themselves on a well cropped, grassy lawn surrounded by the achingly familiar University buildings. The sturdy but graceful enchantment building. The granite castle that was the conjuration building. The alteration building that had once been the winter palace of some long forgotten prince and all the others. Transported to the Blue Mountains when the senior wizards had decided that Agglemon in the throes of decline was simply too dangerous a place to be any longer. The same buildings, a thousand years apart in time, he thought in wonder. He'd had no idea they were that old. Some kind of preservation magic, he speculated, holding back the ravages of time.

     In addition to the structures he recognised, though, there were an equal number he didn't, separated by gardens and tree lined avenues down which white robed apprentices strolled contentedly, some tending allotments of exotic plants used for spell components or as the ingredients of potions. Others sitting on wooden benches to read textbooks or chat with their classmates. Thomas stood there silently for a long time, just drinking in the scene, until Matthew's voice broke him out of his reverie. "What in the names of the Gods is that?"

     Thomas had been facing in just the one direction, but now he turned to look behind him. The transdimensional tunnel had deposited them half way up a low hill, and looking up the slope he saw a large, stone tower reaching up towards the clouds. Sixty feet across at the base, three hundred feet tall. Sheer sided with a wide platform on top edged with a crenellated wall. Narrow windows were carved out of the grey stone, and a balcony ran around it two thirds of the way up.

     "The Tower of Lexandros," he breathed in awe. "The original home of the University. The workplace of Lexandros himself. They only brought in the other buildings as their numbers grew and they needed more space."

     "I only recognise about half the buildings," said Private Stone. "Why didn't they take them all to the valley when they moved?"

     "It takes a lot of magic to move a building," explained the wizard. “They only took those they needed. Remember that their numbers were slashed dramatically during the Massacre of the Mages."

     "So the other buildings are still there, er, here? In the Endless Plains?"

     "Probably, what's left of them anyway. Probably just piles of overgrown rubble by now. Preservation spells have to be renewed every century or so, you see, or they fade and lapse."

     "You said you wanted to consult the archives," said Matthew. "What for?"

     "I want to see what they say about the Gem Lords. It's an opportunity I can't lose. It may be my only chance to learn the truth about my acquired memories."

     "Well, we'd better shake a leg then. We've been ordered back to the ship. If we're late, we'll be in a lot of trouble. That Seskip Tonn strikes me as a man you wouldn't want to cross."

     "Right," agreed Thomas, and he led the way down the hill towards the buildings.