There was a small herd of unicorns grazing in the field he had to walk across. He watched them as he walked past and they watched him back, but then his attention was taken by the dark and brooding Necromancy building which stood a little way apart from the rest of the teaching complex like a strange and rather unpopular relative shunned by the rest of the family.

     From here, though, he was able to get his first look at the research buildings which formed a second complex on the other side of the valley. Thomas paused to look at them, his heart hammering with excitement. This was the closest he'd ever been. Apprentices weren't allowed near them, for their protection and in case their clumsy, unpractised dabblings in magic upset the delicate energies being woven there, but Thomas had come to this spot many times during his student years, to gaze in wonder and to promise himself that one day he would go there and do his part to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Today, at last, he was going to keep that promise. He stood up straight, throwing back his shoulders like a hero out of an old legend, and stepped proudly forward.

     The teaching and research buildings were connected by a narrow paved road, and by an underground tunnel if you believed the stories. On the way he passed a couple of younger men in the silver and black robes of illusionists who nodded to him as he passed. Thomas nodded back, feeling ten feet tall and proud as a lion, and stood even straighter, striding on with an idiotic grin on his face.

     Only wizards walked this road! No-one else! The research buildings had no non-wizard staff. No cooks, no cleaners, no caretakers, nothing. Whatever needed doing the wizards did for themselves, either with magic spells or their own bare hands. The research area was simply too dangerous for anyone who didn't understand the dangerous and unpredictable nature of magic and who lacked the means to take a few elementary precautions. No non-wizard ever walked this road, therefore, and yet he, Thomas Gown, was walking it. I'm a wizard! he thought excitedly. I'm a real wizard! He had the feeling that he'd never really believed it before. Not deep down where it mattered. Not until this moment.

     He was halfway across when he passed the large grove of trees which had, until then, blocked his view of a large swathe of the valley and saw for the first time what they’d been concealing. There, on the edge of a narrow stream about a hundred yards from the village, was a cluster of military style tents, from one of which a pennant bearing the oak tree emblem of the Belthar was flying. Men were working feverishly at something that he couldn't quite make out at this distance, but he got the impression that they were building something. The sound of men barking orders drifted across the still evening air, accompanied by the sound of a hammer striking an anvil.

     "Matilda was right," he muttered to himself. "But what could they possibly be doing that a wizard couldn't do with a single spell?" He vowed to ask someone in the research buildings as he continued his way across.

     The end of the road was marked by a pair of giant stone eagles that towered over him as he approached. A casual visitor who happened to stray this way might have mistaken them for a pair of simple statues, symbolic guardians meant to scare away unwanted guests, but any of the regular residents of Lexandria Valley could have told them that their guardianship of the research buildings was a lot more than symbolic. Every apprentice and every contract worker was warned about them upon their first arrival, warned what would happen if they tried to pass them, and although there were always a few foolish children willing to give it a try, few were foolish enough to do so twice.

     The eagles were, in fact, intensely magical creations that had the power to discern wizards from mundanes. Any non-wizard who tried to pass would cause the eagles to come to sudden, violent life, the stone turning instantly to living flesh and feathers, and the hapless interloper would be caught up in their talons and borne helplessly to the cells, there to spend a few days brooding upon the wisdom of obeying the University's rules.

     Thomas, as a fully qualified wizard, had nothing to fear from them, but he still felt a twinge of nervousness as he approached them. He had to resist the urge to hurry past, as if they might suddenly come to life, the result of some mistake in their perception magics, perhaps. He forced himself to walk past them in a sedate, dignified manner, but once he was past nothing could stop him from looking over his shoulder, to reassure himself that they were still there, frozen immobile. An older wizard passing in the other direction saw him doing this and smiled knowingly. "First time?" he asked, and Thomas nodded ruefully. The older wizard chuckled in amusement before continuing on his way.

     There were very few people out and about when he arrived at the research complex, but his magic sense was tingling in response to a widespread, low level magical field, as if from dozens of small sources all around him. Presumably everyone was in the buildings themselves, casting spells and doing experiments and so on. He stared around with trembling, apprehensive excitement, hardly able to believe that he was really here.

     As with the teaching buildings, every building was of a different architectural style and period, having been collected from all over the world to suit whatever particular need the wizards of the time had had. The largest and most prominent building was a huge Agglemonian fortress, its ten foot thick stone walls now serving to keep potentially dangerous magical energies in rather than invaders out. It occupied a central position halfway along the single street, the so called Wizards' Way, surrounded by smaller buildings that had once been museums, theatres, opera houses, warehouses and one wing of a prison.

     As he grew closer he saw that the prison's tiny windows still bore thick, rusty iron bars and that its roof still sprouted long wooden poles from which dragonwires had once been strung to deter rescue attempts by griffin riders. Clearly, this had been part of no ordinary prison. Once, it had housed criminals rich and powerful enough to have had lots of friends on the outside. It was this prison that turned out to be the Yolanda-Whitemay memorial building, and statues of the two venerable wizards after which it had been named stood beside the huge, iron studded wooden door alongside plaques listing their not inconsiderable accomplishments. Thomas spared them only a brief glance, though, as he hurried up the flight of semicircular stone steps and went in.

     There was no secretary or doorman on duty. Such people were not needed here, where the only people who ever came already knew exactly what they wanted and where they were going. The room that the guards had once occupied was bare and empty and he went through it to find a corridor that stretched to left and right, lined with doors that had little barred windows in them and holders for name tags. A floor plan hung on the wall, though, showing those rooms that had been allocated to each of the three senior wizards who used this building, and Thomas paused to study it briefly.

     Pondar occupied a stretch of a dozen or so rooms along the northern corridor, each room being a number of cells that had been knocked together. He arrived at the first room a moment or two later, knocked on the door and, receiving no reply, peeped in through the window. It was dark, but the wizard might be conducting an experiment that would be spoiled by the light, so he pushed it open and peered timidly in.

     It was a storeroom, packed full of crates and boxes containing various parts of dozens of different plants and animals, all piled higgledy piggledy up on top of each other. The only illumination came from the light that managed to filter in through the three small barred windows, but it was light enough for him to see that Pondar Walton wasn't there. He closed the door again and tried the next one.

     The second room was mostly empty, containing only a couple of long tables on which some pieces of alchemical glassware stood, connected by glass tubes and coiled copper pipes. One conical flask was half full of an amber liquid that was bubbling away above a small flame that seemed to spring out of the empty air. Another small sign that this was the abode of a wizard. The third room was a library, piled high with dusty, leatherbound books that tempted Thomas to stop for a brief browse, but time was pressing and he hurried on.

     The fourth room had the look of a workroom, with dozens of low benches arranged haphazardly across the floor, each one as cluttered with rubbish as a gardener's tool shed. Here at last he found a couple of middle aged men who were busy sorting around amongst all the rubbish as if searching for something. One of them had a small cloth bag in one hand which bulged and clattered with the numerous small objects it contained. He had long dark hair tied back in a ponytail, while the other had a large scar covering much of his left cheek. It was irregularly shaped, looking as though it had been caused by a burn, possibly a backfiring spell, and it had pulled the features of his face into a permanent scowl as it had shrunk over the years. They looked up in surprise as he entered and stared at him for a moment, squinting to see him better in the gloomy light.

     Then the one with the ponytail smiled. "Welcome to the dungeon," he said. "What terrible crime have you committed to be sent here?"

     "Er," began Thomas nervously. "Is either of you Pondar Walton?"

     The man with the ponytail laughed. "Come about that job application, have you? You'll be the fourth. There's three of us got here before you. Did he give you a sunset deadline?" Thomas nodded. "You'd better get a move on then. Introductions can wait 'till there's more time. You'll find him in the main lab, just across the corridor."

     "Thanks," said Thomas, backing out through the door. "I'll see you later."

     The man with the ponytail raised a hand, but the one with the scarred face just scowled harder so Thomas closed the door and crossed to the other side of the corridor.

     The door he'd been directed to looked identical to the others, but his magic sense told him that powerful magics were being worked on the other side. He knocked three times and a gruff voice told him to come in, a voice Thomas recognised as the same that had spoken to him via the farspeaking spell. Thomas took hold of the large iron doorknob that had been fitted to the steel door, his heart hammering in his chest. He turned it and entered.