"Hey, listen to this," said Thomas half an hour later. They were back in their dwelling tree, reading the script by the light of the sun stone that floated above their heads. Lirenna had handed him acts three and four while she worked her way through acts one and two. "Scene, a deep, dark forest. The priests are camped around a small fire." He looked up. "Okay?" Lirenna nodded.

     "Resalintas has moved a short distance from the others to pray and meditate in preparation for the trials to come, and the others are talking in soft voices behind his back. Vasta says 'How hard this is for him. The strength of his faith is beyond my ability to imagine!' Tarros says 'Aye, few indeed are the men bred in that mold. Who else but he could have stood before the witch demon Arta and faced her down by the sheer force of his personality? Who else but he could have stood on the edge of the Pit itself when all others shied away? He is a giant among men. A figurehead for all that is good and holy.' Durgan says 'And yet thoughtful and compassionate, with a soul that cares for those weaker than himself. He is a flame that shines in the dark for all those who are lost and frightened. Wounded and in pain'." He slapped the paper with his hand. "It's like that all the way through."

     "Act one's the same," agreed Lirenna with a smile. "There's a battle scene here. The priests are attacked by a tribe of shologs. It's a slaughter! Resalintas just waves his sword around and they all fall down dead. The whole thing’s all about how wonderful Resalintas is."

     "You think she's got a crush on him?" said Thomas with a grin. "With the idea of him, anyway."

     "She wouldn't if she'd ever met him. I heard a story once about a girl who fell in love with him. He completely ignored her, didn't even acknowledge her existence. The poor girl was heartbroken."

     "He won't break any more hearts now he's dead," pointed out Thomas. "He's safe to love now. She can pretend he would have returned her love if they'd ever met. We can use this. If we tell her what a great guy he was, she'll be more likely to listen to our suggestions."

     Lirenna nodded but then frowned. "What if she finds out that no priest of Samnos can enter the Maze of Samnos? Then she'll know that he couldn't have been on the quest."

     "How's she going to find out? We had to do a lot of research before we found out. It's a fact known only to the priests themselves and a few crusty old sages. Besides..." he added, flicking through act four. "There doesn't seem to be a Maze of Samnos in this version. According to this, Samnos Himself hands him the Sceptre when he's been through enough trials to prove his worthiness to receive it."

     "Just how much of it is accurate?" asked Lirenna, also flicking through the pages. "How much of what she's written actually happened?"

     "So far as I can tell, nothing at all," replied Thomas. "The whole thing seems to have sprung fully formed from her overactive imagination. There's not even any mention of Rhanov and Zebulon."

     "That does it!" cried Lirenna, slamming her half of the script down on the table with a bang. "I'm not reading another word of this drass. She can ignore us, the whole world can forget about us for all I care, but she's got to pay a tribute to Rhanov and Zebulon. The whole world owes them a debt it can never repay."

     "Don't worry, we'll get her to write them in," promised Thomas. "We'll tell her they were big fans of Resalintas, always telling everyone how great he was. That ought to do the trick. Come on, let's make a start on the character profiles."

     Lirenna agreed, and they searched out some spare scraps of paper left over from Thomas’s preliminary manuscript on the wonders and dangers of the Ghost Ocean. Then they sat down at the small, wooden table, thought for a while and began to write. Their memories of Shaun, Matthew, Diana and Jerry came flooding back, so clear and fresh that it seemed incredible that more than twenty years had passed since they'd last seen them, and they found it impossible to limit themselves to just one sheet each. Thomas could have filled a whole book on Diana alone, on her gentle faith and iron hard determination to follow her Lady's wishes. Her inspirational courage and her endless struggle to keep her wayward brothers on the path of virtue and honesty.

     He found himself wondering where she was now and what she was doing. Probably still living in the Overgreen Forest, he thought, daring the danger from monsters and evil humanoids to minister to the people of her home town. Sharing some rooms adjoining the town temple with Shaun, who'd refused to leave her side since being cursed by the Runeblade, his sanity depending on always being sure that she was safe. That, at least, was what they'd intended the last time they'd seen them, that morning in the street outside the boarding house.

     The four of them had spent several weeks together after being released from Beltharan service, and Thomas’s joy at being reunited with Lirenna after more than a year apart had been soured only by Matthew and Jerry's absence. The young human had been busy courting a farmer's daughter and seriously contemplating the prospect of marriage while the tiny nome had set off to see the world and had probably been half a continent away by then.

     The remaining Claimjumpers had talked about them as they'd rested and recuperated from the Fourth Shadowwar, staying in the best inns and hostels the empire had to offer and touring the country's most beautiful scenery as they made their unhurried way south to war-ravaged Ilandia. Then they had parted, going their separate ways. Shaun and Diana to the Overgreen Forest, Thomas and Lirenna to Haven, to be married.

     They wrote until it was dark and the stars began to twinkle through the gaps in the overhead canopy. Then they stood, yawning and stretching. Had a wash, undressed and went to bed. An hour later they were asleep in each others arms, dreaming of their dearest friends and of how they would be immortalised as characters in a play.

    Thomas dreamed that Kama's play was a great hit. A sensation, being performed in Tara's Imperial auditorium before the King himself, their characters played by the greatest actors of the day while an audience of thousands roared its approval. Gradually, though, Thomas’s dream changed and some strange additional characters made an appearance. The entire audience consisted of glorious godlike beings whose clothes were the colour of the gemstones on their wrists while, overhead, a flock of giant legless dragons circled and circled endlessly like vultures.

☆☆☆

     When morning came he remembered nothing of the dream, though, and sprang out of the cramped, shayen sized bed fresh and rested and ready to meet the new day. They examined each other’s bodies, looking for any new warts or marks that might indicate that they were suffering some after effects from the disastrous and almost fatal teleportation from Haven, but found nothing.

     “Looks like we got away with it,” said Thomas with relief. “If Derrin’s okay as well, I think we can finally put it behind us.”

     He then spent a couple of hours reading the new version of the identify spell the Magister had placed in his spellbook, eager to cast it on the strange magical meteorite. He was just finishing when Derrin arrived, slipping out of his clothes so they could examine his back and bottom, the only parts of his body he couldn’t see for himself.

     "How are you enjoying your lessons?" asked Lirenna afterwards as the boy slipped back into his clothes.

     "Exciting!" cried Derrin, beaming all over his face. "They're telling us about people and places I never even heard of! You never told me the world was such an exciting place!"

     Thomas and Lirenna shared a look of concern. This could cause problems when they returned to Haven. "Don't forget the lie you have to tell when you go back to Haven,” said Thomas carefully. “I know lying is usually bad. I'd normally be upset if you started telling lies, but this is an important lie. A necessary lie. The survival of Haven depends on everyone thinking that the world is dull, drab and boring."

     Derrin nodded, but both his parents could see that he was unhappy with it, and it was making his parents unhappy as well. Derrin had a solid core of honesty at the heart of his soul. If he didn't like something it was usually because it was genuinely bad and wrong. The boy had never experienced evil, though. Haven was kept safe from evil and so was Lexandria Valley. He didn't understand what it was that they were trying to defend his home from and wouldn't until he experienced evil for himself, which Thomas hoped he never would. Even so, though, there had to be a better way to protect Haven than by telling an innocent boy to lie to all his friends.

     Half an hour later they all left the dwelling tree. Derrin returning to the teaching buildings, Lirenna going to the farm and Thomas going to the research buildings to join the staff of Saturn Vasil Mon-Morchov. The senior wizard was delighted to see him and ushered him into the laboratory where the magical meteorite was waiting, together with a dozen other robed and cowled old men who looked up as he entered, regarding him with a mixture of curiosity and anticipation.

     "Finding someone who can actually sense the magical field and may, therefore, be able to cast an Identify spell with a fair degree of success will be a major breakthrough for us," Saturn explained, "so a few of my colleagues popped along to share the experience. We'll each cast a mind-reading spell on you, so that we can see whatever you see. Otherwise, being untrained in the reporting of events, you may fail to mention some small but vital detail. Something that you might consider irrelevant but which could hold the key to the whole mystery."

     Thomas nodded, noting that no-one had bothered to ask him whether he wanted his mind read. Evidently, his mental privacy was of no concern to them. If he'd had any guilty secrets he wanted to hide, that was just too bad. "When do you want me to do it?" he asked with a nervous glance at the assembled wizards. Half the senior wizards in the University must be here, he thought, his mouth going dry with anxiety. He'd never been in such exalted company! What if he did something wrong? What if he made a complete fool of himself in front of all these mighty and powerful people?

     "Wait just a minute," said Saturn, and he spoke the words of a spell. Thomas felt the very slightest tickle in his head as the mind reading spell reached into his brain, followed by others, one at a time, as the other wizards cast their own spells. Thomas was suddenly very aware that the wizards knew his every thought, were instantly aware of everything that passed through his mind. I've got to be careful what I think, he told himself. I've got to be very careful not to think of something embarrassing or shameful like...

     Images sprang into his mind before he could stop them. Himself moving into an alcove so that he could pick his nose without being seen and wiping his finger under the wooden bench. Himself urinating behind a bush less than twenty yards from a small group of gossiping female apprentices because he couldn't be bothered to make the five minute walk to the toilets. The sight of his wife lying naked on their bed, her body covered by a glistening sheen of sweat from their lovemaking...

     He gave a cry of shame and terror as he realised that the assembled wizards had shared these images and imagined their reaction, but when he looked up they were just chatting idly to each other in low voices, waiting patiently for him to cast the Identify spell. Only one of them noticed his distress. The youngest of them, whose curly hair still had most of its colour.

     "They all pick their noses and piss behind bushes as well," he said, smiling as he put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Everyone does. Don't worry, your mind is run of the mill. Better than most in fact. You should see some of the minds I've read in my time." His eyes rolled in mock horror, and Thomas grinned broadly in sudden relief. "You're among friends here," he added. "Now hurry up and cast the spell before the mind reading spells expire."

     Saturn handed him the material component of the spell, a tiny golden bell of exquisite workmanship. The bell would be consumed by the magical energies that would be shaped and directed by it, so a new one had to be made by a master craftsman every time a wizard wanted to cast the spell. Craftsmen didn't do that kind of work cheaply, of course, not to mention the cost of the gold itself, and this was the main reason why such a useful spell was so seldom used. In Haven, it had been the Queen herself who'd met the cost of the golden bells, along with all his other spell components, in lieu of payment for his services. It had amounted to less than half of what he could have earned as a freelance wizard anywhere else in the world, but he didn't begrudge the low income. With all the local farmers and local businessmen paying him and Lirenna in kind for their services, they'd had almost no need for money, and the privilege of living in such beautiful surroundings, with such kind and wonderful neighbours, had been beyond price.

     Thomas held the bell by its short chain in one hand and laid his other hand on the meteorite. He put the wizards and their mind reading spells out of his mind, cleared his mind of all extraneous thoughts and allowed the words of the spell to come forward, filling the void he had created for them. He spoke the words, shaking the bell on the end of its chain as he did so, and felt the magical power stored in his body flowing out, shaped by the words and the golden bell, which was disintegrated in the process. The spell created a link between his mind and the meteorite, and as he felt the connection being made he closed his eyes and waited for the images to come.