"You have good reason to suspect that your son could be a wizard?" said Gantry when they'd finished, fixing his glittery eyes on the boy, who smiled shyly back. In that moment, Thomas thought he looked just like a rak, except for the smile of genuine warmth and compassion that spread across his face as he regarded his son, and he allowed himself a moment of idle fantasy as he imagined what their reaction would be if they ever met a real rak. It could so easily have happened, many times over the previous century, if the valley's cloak of secrecy had failed and the invading Shadowarmies had broken in. Most Havenites, he knew, had absolutely no idea how much they owed the rest of the world, despite the continuing danger they still faced from them.

     "I think so," he said, putting the fantasy out of his mind. "He is the child of two wizards, after all, and he shows a curiosity and an intelligence far in advance of his years. I think he deserves to be given the chance."

     "But he is still so small,” said Moeslo, also peering at the boy. "Why not wait a few years, wait for him to grow a few more inches? He is, after all, half shayen, and so has plenty of time ahead of him. What, two, three hundred years?" Thomas and Lirenna nodded. "Well then, why not let him enjoy his childhood while he can? He'll grow up soon enough. You'll be surprised how fast the years pass. Take it from me."

     "But these first years are so important to a developing intellect," said Gantry, unexpectedly supporting the wizards. "We pride ourselves on the quality of our schools and teachers here, but the fact remains that we cannot train wizards, and we need wizards to help us preserve the secrecy of Haven." He glanced through some of the papers he'd brought with him. "The reports of his teachers confirm the opinion of his parents. They feel that he has exceeded their ability to teach him. He has effectively been teaching himself for the past year at least.”

     “He may have the intellect of a sixteen year old,” said Moeslo, “but what about his emotional age?” He reached for the papers Gantry had been reading and pulled one of them out, looking down at it. “His teachers believe that he is still emotionally young, that he has not yet reached the age at which he commits his loyalties. If he spends an extended period of time away from Haven at this tender age, he may begin to see Haven as just another place."

     "He need not be away for an extended period of time," said Thomas, playing his trump card. "Now that I can teleport, I can bring him back as often as you like. He won’t be becoming an apprentice yet, he has several years of mundane preparatory education ahead of him first during which he can come and go as much as he wants. He could spend a few months there, a few months here among his shayen relatives, learning the shayen side of his heritage. That way, his Havenite teachers could ensure that his moral education remains on course as well, and you'd be able to keep an eye on him. Satisfy yourselves as to his continuing loyalty to Haven."

     Gantry nodded, but he looked doubtful, while Moeslo frowned is open disapproval. "I don't know," he muttered. "Teleporting..." He shook his head unhappily.

     "The other advantage of teleporting is that, going instantaneously from here to there, he sees none of the places in between. None of us do. Even if we were captured by an enemy and forced to tell everything we know, we would only be able to give them the mental image needed to guide a teleportation spell. We could not betray the location of Haven, because we still would not know it."

     "But teleportation spells can be traced, can they not?" said Moeslo.

     "Yes," conceded Thomas, "but the spells involved are very powerful, very high level. I should think there are only a dozen or so people in the world capable of such a feat. For all practical purposes, teleportation spells are untraceable."

     "I'm afraid we have to consider even the most unlikely possibility," said Gantry, though. "If there's even the smallest chance that a wizard might trace your teleportation spell and so learn the location of Haven, then I'm afraid we have to forbid it."

     "Look," spluttered Thomas in exasperation. "Any wizard powerful enough to trace a teleportation spell could locate Haven quite easily by other means. And wizards that powerful tend to have much loftier ambitions than the conquest of what is, quite frankly, a small and rather unimportant valley Kingdom. Wizards that powerful play Klann with Kingdoms large enough to swallow Haven a dozen times over."

     Lirenna reached over and laid a hand on his shoulder, shaking her head to warn him. One didn't take this tone with the Elders. They were to be treated with honour and respect. Thomas was in no mood to be respectful, though. "That's why I learned the bloody spell in the first place! I thought it would be the perfect way to enter and leave Haven without having to know its location."

     "You may be right when you say that powerful wizards would have no interest in Haven," said Moeslo, "but once the knowledge of Haven's location is in the hands of outlanders we would have no control over its spread. It could easily find its way into the hands of less powerful people with pettier ambitions. The riches of our valley, our iron, jewels and silver, are both our blessing and our curse. Once the knowledge of where these treasures are to be found leaks out into the outer world, our destruction would be inevitable."

     "The secret must be guarded at all costs," agreed Gantry. "No precaution is too extreme."

     "But the secret's already out!" cried Thomas. "I've told you about the Kronos observatory. They can look right down on us!"

     "We don't know they've seen us. No message has come from Belthar. No ultimatum, no assurances of friendship..."

     "Because they don't want to tip you off that they have a way of seeing you. The observatory's their biggest secret."

     "Then they have as much to lose from betraying our secret as we do. We already have an understanding with the trogs. If necessary, we can come to a similar arrangement with Belthar. We can threaten to tell the world about Kronos."

     "But the secret will leak out sooner or later anyway. Think of all the people who already know about it. All the people who work up there. The observers themselves, their superiors and assistants. The people in Tara to whom they deliver their reports... It would only take one of them to defect to the enemies of Belthar, or have his mind read by them. Your bargaining chip may already have been lost."

     "Even if that were the case, that is no reason to relax our vigilance. I understand your position, and your desire to warn us of the danger, but I'm afraid there can be no compromise. You may not teleport directly to or from this valley. We have no choice but to forbid it."

     Siege mentality, thought Thomas bitterly. Their fear of discovery makes them see the rest of the world as their enemy. They've managed to protect the rest of the valley from it by presenting the outside world as so dull and boring that they can just forget it exists, but they’ve fallen victim to it themselves. The Elders, and probably the Royal Family as well, have developed the same mentality as the inhabitants of a city under siege. They're paralysed by fear. Hiding is the only thing they know how to do, but one day they will be found. What will they do then? Do they have any contingency plans laid, or will they just fall to their knees before the first man to walk in and beg for mercy? Fools! he thought in angry despair. It's no more than they deserve!

     He almost shouted these thoughts out loud in his frustration but kept his mouth shut with an effort. He couldn't keep from squirming in his seat, though, his hands clenched into fists.

     "There's no problem really," said Lirenna, seeing his distress and anxious to change the subject before her husband lost control of himself. Time to lead them away from the old argument and get back to the point in hand. "The Waykeepers can take us out of the valley, to a town in the Overgreen Forest, and we can teleport from there. Any attempt to trace the spell would only show that it originated in the Overgreen Forest. The secret of Haven's location would still be safe."

     The Elders nodded in agreement, but Thomas grew even more unhappy. "That would mean us being put in a trance for the journey," he said.

     "So that you would not be aware of any detail of your journey," agreed Gantry. "You would also not be aware of the passage of time while in an entranced state. You would experience an instantaneous transition from one place to another, just like a teleportation spell."

     "You were quite happy with it twenty years ago, when you first came here," pointed out Lirenna.

     "There was no alternative then," replied the wizard sullenly. "Now there is."

     "No there is not," said Gantry sternly, making his thin, gaunt features appear even more threatening. Derrin shuffled in his chair unhappily. "Anyone entering or leaving Haven must be in a hypnotic trance. The Waykeepers themselves are the only exceptions."

     "It is the law," agreed Moeslo, and Thomas heard such flat finality in that simple statement that he knew that any further argument was futile. He nodded, therefore, and the Elders relaxed, smiling again as they settled back into their seats. He took comfort from the fact that they seemed to have accepted that they could leave the valley if they wanted, though. They were only concerned with how they came and went.

     "I am still concerned over the effect that exposure to outsiders will have on the boy at such an impressionable age," said Moeslo. "He is so young, so full of curiosity. If only it were possible to educate our own wizards..."

     "We need to keep in touch with advances in wizardry," pointed out Gantry. "If the University comes up with new magics that can locate us, we need to know about it. Derrin will, in effect, be our spy in the University, as was his mother before him."

     Thomas felt a small, hopeless smile trying to appear on his face. They still wouldn't do anything. They weren't doing anything about Kronos, and if some University wizard did make a breakthrough they wouldn't do anything about that either. They just wanted their spies to come back and tell them that nothing had changed, to tell them that they could go back to sleep and forget about the rest of the world. He sighed unhappily, but beside him Derrin and Lirenna were grinning with delight. Even Lenny thinks I'm being silly, he thought. She thinks I just don't want to be put in a trance every time we come and go, which is true enough, but she thinks I'm exaggerating the danger to get my own way. But she has a ring of ESP! She could read my mind, see how genuinely I fear for the future of Haven...

     That brought him up short. Yes, she could do exactly that, but she still thought he was wrong to be so worried about Kronos. Could she be right? Could it be that he really was exaggerating the dangers to avoid entrancement? Could she have read something in his mind that even he didn't know was there? He examined his state of mind, what he thought of the three of them being put under hypnosis, and was a little surprised to realise that it didn't just worry him. It terrified him! The thought of his wife and child being so completely in someone else's power scared him really badly.

     Could they be right? he wondered. Am I so scared of it that I'm using Kronos as an excuse to avoid it? Just how great was the danger posed by the smallest moon? Really? He thought about just how big the world really was, and how small Haven was in comparison. Just how likely was it that the secret valley had been found, or ever would be? Surely Belthar had more important parts of the world to study than all the hundreds of small valleys threading their way through the Copper Mountains.

     Moeslo, meanwhile, was studying the boy. "And what about you, my lad? What do you want?"

     "I want to be a wizard," said Derrin, visibly trying to contain his excitement. Their earlier comments about his emotional youth had evidently stung him and he was trying very hard to appear composed and adult. “I believe In have wizard potential and I want to play my part in the defence of Haven. That means I have to go to Lexandria University, but I don't care how I get there. I'm very happy to be hypnotized. I trust the Waykeepers.”

     The old man nodded seriously. He shared a glance with then other Elder, who also nodded. "Very well," he said. "We will advise the Queen that permission should be granted. Unless she has some special reason for denying her permission, the matter is settled. Go back home, and word will be sent to you when the arrangements have been finalised."

     They stood, and the Gowns also stood to shake hands with them. The Elders then made their way out of the room, grinning to themselves. As soon as the door was closed behind them Lirenna gave a little shriek of delight, and the two wizards hugged each other tightly while Derrin threw his arms around their legs, smiling up at them and laughing happily.