In the event, though, before he could think of a single word to put down on paper his eye was caught by the pile of old scrolls heaped on the corner of his desk. Encrypyed documents discovered by treasure seekers in an old Agglemonian strongbox that Queen Tabitha had asked him to look at in case they turned out to be something important. Before he knew what he was doing he had the papers in his hands and was scanning his eyes across them as more ideas as to the nature of the key flitted through his head.

     Whoever had written them, all those centuries ago, had been a genius, no doubt about that. Not only had the cipher defied all the usual tried and tested decoding methods, it had also defeated the wizard's translation spell, which was supposed to allow him to read anything in any language even if it had been encrypted. Whoever had done this must have been familiar with the spell, and had coded it in such a way that not even magic could unscramble it, which made it very interesting. Interesting enough to fascinate even the wizards of Lexandria University, he had no doubt. Before he asked the Queen's permission to hand them over, though, he wanted another go at cracking it himself. It was a matter of pride. He had to show everybody how brilliant he was, what a genius he was. If he handed them over as they were, someone else would get all the credit and he'd be left looking like an idiot. Besides, the Queen had given them to him to decipher and he didn't want to let her down.

     Most of the work he and Lirenna did to earn their living was like that. Actual spellcasting made up only a tiny part of their professional careers. Most of their time was spent using the knowledge they'd gained at the University to give advice and solve puzzles like this one, and now and again they also spent a few hours teaching in the village school.

     Lirenna also helped the valley's wizards keep Haven hidden from the people who passed by less than twenty miles away. The Agglemonian Great Road that ran just outside the entrance to the valley was quite busy during the autumn trading season, and some of the travelers who stopped for the night ranged almost all the way to the entrance itself in their search for small game to cook over their open fires. As if that weren't bad enough, prospecting trogs wandered the mountain ridges and valleys in search of new veins to mine and wandering tribes of humanoids prowled endlessly on the search for travelers to ambush. They all had to be gently guided away from the valley without their realising that their steps were being directed by wills other than their own.

     Thomas himself had no part in maintaining the valley's veil of secrecy. Although, as Lirenna had said, the valley's common people had accepted the Ilandian wizard as part of the community, the valley's wizards were less trusting and hadn't yet let him in on the secret of how all the people who might otherwise have stumbled across the valley were kept in ignorance of it. Even Lirenna was held in some suspicion by them for having brought her brand new husband to the secret valley, but Thomas was determined that one day he would win their trust and that he would be allowed to play his full part as a Havenite wizard.

     When Thomas, as a young child, had first learned of the valley, his first thought had not been how the valley managed to remain secret but why they bothered. After all, other small communities managed to survive in remote, isolated parts of the world, somehow managing to defend themselves against bands of brigands and tribes of humanoids wanting to sack and pillage them. Why couldn't Haven do the same? It had been Lirenna who'd given him the answer, that day in the common room of Lexandria University twenty five years before.

     “Do you ever think that all that iron might be more a curse than a blessing?” he’d asked her one day shortly after their marriage. “Why not just announce yourself to the world, let the miners in after charging them a stiff fee to do so, and let them dig it all up? Then, when it’s all gone, they'll have no more reason to bother you.”

     “But then we'll all be rich, and that’ll make us a target,” Lirenna had replied. “We'll be inundated with merchants wanting to sell us things.”

     “Some people would see that as a good thing,” Thomas had pointed out.

     “And what about all the thieves and criminals who would also come? At the moment Haven is safe. We've managed to almost entirely eliminate evil from the valley. Do you know how many places there are like that? Lexandria, Pargonn…” She paused. “You see? I can't actually think of any more! That's how great an achievement it is, and we’re proud of it. They'll never agree to open up the valley and let all that evil in again.”

     “And what about the Kronos observatory?” Thomas had countered. “The secret’s out. They could be looking down on Haven right this minute.”

     Thomas and Lirenna had been warned by the Beltharan Intelligence Service that the existence of the Observatory on the smallest moon was a state secret and that, since they were both technically Beltharan citizens. for them to reveal it to anyone would be regarded as an act of treason. Thomas had been born in Ilandia, a Beltharan province, and Haven was inside the territory that Belthar claimed as its own. Their consciences had troubled them enough, though, that they'd revealed the existence of the Observatory to Haven's Queen and her Council of Elders, while asking them not to let it be known to the general population, a favour that the Queen had granted gladly.

     The valley's rulers had been thrown into a near panic by the news, and even now, twenty years later, gossip had it that they still had no idea what they were going to do about it. The fact that so much time had gone by without the secret of Haven's location being revealed to the world gave them cause for optimism, though. Maybe the observers simply hadn't noticed Haven yet. After all, Haven was a small valley. One of many small valleys dwarfed and lost amongst the towering mountains that surrounded them on all sides. Even with a Lens of Farseeing, an observer would have to be looking in exactly the right place to see it.

   There was another possibility that bothered the Havenites more, though. Maybe Haven had been found, and the Beltharans were simply keeping quiet about it. Why they would do that was a subject of frenzied speculation amongst the valley's Elders. Maybe they were keeping Haven's secret out of pure altruism. The Beltharans liked to portray themselves as the good guys to the rest of the world, after all. Or maybe they were planning to get something from the Havenites in return for their continued silence. It was worrying, but if the status quo could continue this long, maybe it could continue a little longer. Maybe it could continue forever. That was the attitude that seemed to be prevailing at the moment. So long as things are going all right, leave well enough alone. Do nothing to alter existing circumstances. Don't even sneeze...

     As she did several times each day, Lirenna tried to put Kronos out of her mind. She'd warned the Elders of the danger and that was all she could do. She searched for something else to occupy her mind, therefore, and remembered Derrin's dirty washing. A few spells to get the grimed in dirt and grass stains out of his clothes would take her mind off things for a while, and then she'd promised to help some of the local farmers with their rat problem. A single spell could clear them all out in no time and save half the year's crop from being eaten by the filthy rodents. She cast the laundry spells, therefore, watching for a while to make sure they were working properly, and then wrapping a shawl around her shoulders, she left the house.

     Even in this modern day and age, wizards were still held in fear and suspicion in most parts of the world. Even in those more civilised places where they were welcomed as useful members of the community, most ordinary people were still rather nervous of them and preferred not to have them living too close. A wizard’s cottage, therefore, was usually set a little apart from the rest of the community. Still within easy walking distance but far enough away that no-one had to worry about some stray wisp of randomised magic drifting over the garden fence and turning their children into goblins.

     There was none of this nonsense in Haven, though. Thomas and Lirenna’s cottage was located on a country lane that led into the town of Summersby along with several other houses. They were separated from each other by large gardens and vegetable plots, but the wizards' cottage was no more separated from its neighbours than any of the others. As she strolled along the grassy path that followed the deeply rutted road of hard packed earth, therefore, Lirenna passed several of her neighbours, many of them pausing to offer her a friendly greeting and to wish her a happy anniversary.

     The only way in which she was treated differently from the other members of the community was that no-one tried to engage her in a lengthy conversation. This wasn’t because they were being aloof from her, though, but because it was assumed that a wizardess on her way somewhere had to be engaged on important, urgent business and no-one wanted to delay her from it. On other occasions, when she was standing or sitting somewhere, not going anywhere or apparently doing anything, they were happy to chat with her at great length, talking about all the things that women talk about in every world in creation.

     She didn’t head towards Summersby, though, but headed in the other direction, away from the town, to where the cottages were spread further apart and gradually became farmhouses backing onto the strictly functional and far less attractive farm buildings in which the occupants spent most of their working days. She was heading for the Brent farm, to keep a promise she’d made the friendly, rotund woman a few days before while standing in the queue for the village waterpump. It took her most of an hour to walk the distance, but it was warm, the sun was shining and she loved to walk. She loved to peep over hedges and fences to see what had been going on in people’s gardens since the last time she’d passed that way.

     Esmerelda Brent opened the front door of her farmhouse and came bustling out to give her a hug while the demi-shae was still opening the gate that led into her large and overgrown front garden. “What a surprise! We didn’t hope to see you so soon! We know how busy you must be at this time of year. You must have so many more important things that need doing…”

     “Nothing is more important, or more rewarding, than helping friends,” replied Lirenna, smiling happily.

     The farmwife blushed with pleasure as two of her daughters came out to usher the demi shae inside. “Happy anniversary!” one of the girls said, echoed by the other.

     Their mother slapped herself on the head. “Your anniversary!” she cried, as if she’d forgotten, although Lirenna had never known her to forget anyone's special dates, and she knew hundreds of people. “What are you doing, working on your anniversary? What’s that husband of yours thinking of, letting you out of the house when he should be pampering you, doting all over you…?”

     “He does that all the time, every day,” replied the demi-shae, smiling happily. “Don’t worry, I happen to know there’s some extra special pampering on its way later this afternoon. In the meantime, we have vermin to kill. Lead the way if you please, my good lady.”

     Esmeralda Brent laughed out loud and led the way through the house, out the back and into the grain silo.

     The Brents tended twenty acres of corn and barley and had just harvested the winter crop; plants that had been sown the previous autumn and lain dormant through the long winter to mature in the early spring. The rats and mice would eat most of their profits unless they were dealt with, though, and so Lirenna used her magic to charm them out of the fields and buildings where Esmerelda Brent and her daughters drowned them in a barrel while they talked about the weather, the price of corn and the merits of the daughters' boyfriends.

     When the job was done, Esmerelda took them all inside for a cup of tea, a cherry cake and a long chat during which they discussed the many faults and the far fewer virtues of men in general, a subject of never ending amusement that never failed to throw up new insights even though they seemed to talk of little else whenever they got together. Come to that, it occurred to Lirenna that she ended up on that same subject no matter who she was with. It seemed to be the only thing that women ever talked about, unless there happened to be one or two men actually present at the time. If there were more than two men, of course, or even more than one, they would end up talking to each other to the exclusion of the women, who would then be free to go off together and return to their favourite subject.

     At around noon the sound of heavy, tramping feet came from the yard, and then Harvey appeared in the doorway, stamping the mud from his boots. "You take them off before you come in here!" his wife warned him sternly. "I spent an hour scrubbing the floor yesterday."

     "Lenny!" the father of the house declared joyfully. "There I was out ploughing the lower field when I should have been here, entertaining our honoured guest. Louie, take the boots off before you come in here. Your mother spent a hour scrubbing the floor yesterday."

     "Good day, Mistress Gown," said the boy, clutching his cloth cap to his chest respectfully.

     "Good day, Harvey, Louie," said Lirenna, rising from her chair. "I was afraid I might miss you. I was just about to leave."

     "You'll stay for some pie, won't you?" said Esmerelda. "What kind of hosts would we be if we didn’t share our meal with you?"

     "I'm sorry," said the demi-shae apologetically, "but I really have to be going. It's later than I thought and Tom'll be wanting his own lunch."
"Any man who can't fix a meal for himself is no real man," said the farmwife earnestly. "Let him cut his own slice of pie. You stay and have some of ours." Behind her, one of her daughters was already lifting a large pie down from a cupboard. A large slice had already been cut from it revealing a solid heart of hard packed beef.