"I think he was a clay man," said Edward half an hour later as they sat sipping Lydian tea in the room that had once served as the prison guard's common room.

     Each of the buildings in the research area had an area set aside for rest and relaxation, and many of them had dormitories as well, as many of the high level spells that were routinely cast there could leave a wizard needing several days of bed rest afterwards, too exhausted even to make his way back to his own rooms. Thomas had heard of wizards who hadn't left the buildings in which they worked for years, who had all their meals brought to them and slept in their own laboratories. There was even a story of one wizard, Old Marley, who'd deliberately sealed himself up in a basement years before in order not to be disturbed and who was still working away down there, all alone. His hair white and straggly and his beard tucked over his shoulder to keep it out of the way. Muttering and giggling to himself as he toyed with magics so powerful that the slightest mistake could blow the whole valley to the judgement of the Gods.

     "No way," said Tassley, though. "No clay man would dare come here. He'd be spotted in an instant! They can copy our outward appearance and even some of our memories and personality, but they can't copy our ability to cast spells."

     "No-one saw this chap cast a spell," pointed out Edward. "And if everyone thinks they wouldn't dare come here, no-one would be looking out for them. It would be easy for one to slip in unnoticed."

     "I don't believe it," said Tassley, though. "And it doesn't explain why he was barefoot. In all the stories of clay men I've heard, they could change size and build and have no trouble finding clothes to fit them, including shoes. One story I heard says that the magic that allows their body to change shape also changes their clothing to match. Not that I've ever seen a clay man, I admit."

     "I've seen clay men," said Thomas. "We had a clay man in our group once, unknown to us until we stumbled across the body of the person it was impersonating. The creature had stolen its victim's clothes, so apparently they can only copy their victims' bodies, not their clothing as well."

     "There, you see? You see?" cried Edward triumphantly. "It could have been a clay man! It must have entered in the form of a junior wizard, a small one so as to be as inconspicuous as possible, but when it reached the lab it wanted to be as big as possible, so it could cause as much damage as possible, and it had to take off its clothing to grow. It just put on a lab robe to cover its modesty."

     "I don't think clay men have modesty," replied Thomas. "And why didn't it just come in as a big person to begin with? Then it wouldn't have needed to undress."

     "A small person attracts less notice. It didn't want to attract attention to itself."

     "Then where are the clothes it took off?"

     "It could have hidden them somewhere, perhaps."

     "Where?"

     "I don't know, but it explains perfectly how it got out of the storeroom. Did you count how many proctors went in to search for it? I bet you anything you like that one more proctor came out of that room than went into it. That room contains proctor uniforms, as well as all kinds of clothing. It could easily have dressed as a proctor and then mingled with the others, pretending to search for itself."

     "That's the stupidest idea I ever heard in my life!" cried Tassley. "You think the proctors wouldn't notice another proctor suddenly appearing out of nowhere? They're not stupid you know."

     "Proctors are as capable of being fooled by a clever opponent as anyone. They were concentrating all their attention on finding a fugitive. A scared, panicking saboteur. If they suddenly noticed another proctor amongst them, they might just have assumed that he'd arrived later and entered after them."

     "What do you think, Karem?" asked Thomas, turning to the fourth member of their little team. The scarred man had been sipping absent mindedly at his tea, listening to the conversation with only half an ear. He looked up as everyone turned their attention to him, waiting to hear his opinion, and he took another slow, lazy sip of his drink before replying.

     "I think," he said, "that before you go dreaming up overly convoluted, complicated theories you should investigate some of the simpler possibilities. Has anyone searched the room for trap doors and secret exits?"

     Edward stared at him in disbelief. "This used to be a prison!" he exclaimed. "That room used to be prison cells! You don't have trap doors and secret exits in prison cells!"

     "It was a prison several hundred years ago," said Karem matter of factly. "There's been a lot of history since then. This building had served several functions in the hands of several owners even before we took it over and brought it here. That's the trouble with second hand buildings. It's all very well saying that it saves time and magic that could be put to better use, but you never know exactly what you're getting. In my opinion, our Elders and betters would do well to create their own workplaces. The effort that would have to be invested would be minimal and well worth while."

     "He could have a point," agreed Thomas thoughtfully. "That mousy haired chap said that the intruder was looking into every room he passed, as if he was looking for something. Maybe he was looking for a specific room. Maybe he knows something of the history of this building."

     "That's even more farfetched than the clay man theory," said Tassley in disgust. "His original plan was simply to get out through the door, like anyone else. He only changed his plan when his exit was blocked. Are you suggesting that he researched the history of this building, in great depth, just in case he might need the knowledge, or do you think it's just a coincidence that the building he entered was one he knew something about?"

     "Yeah, yeah, okay," said Thomas irritably. "It was just an idea, that's all."

     "What puzzles me is why he did it," said Edward thoughtfully. "Why break in here just to break a few glass tubes and beakers? Why didn't he destroy the orb while he was at it? That's the one thing that really would be hard to replace."

     Thomas nodded, thinking of the large, glowing globe of glass that stood on a pedestal at one end of the laboratory. He had no idea what it did, but if it was like other orbs he'd seen it was probably just a thin shell of glass containing a special alchemical gas and fragile enough to be shattered with a single light blow. And yet, although the intruder had attacked the other glassware with a wild frenzy, he had ignored the orb completely.

     "We'll probably never know," he replied. "He got away, and if he's smart he'll get out of here and never come back. We'll probably never know any more about it than we do now."

     The others nodded mournfully, and Karem got up to get them another round of drinks.

☆☆☆

     Pondar Walton simmered with barely suppressed rage as he surveyed the damage his laboratory had suffered. Broken glass crunched under his feet as he strode up and down beside the long, potion stained table, picking up small test tubes and short lengths of tubing that had somehow survived intact and placing them in their storage racks with hands that shook uncontrollably. "I want him caught," he hissed, and one of the junior proctors shrank back from the acid venom in his voice. "Caught and punished. Is that understood?"

     "Unfortunately. he appears to have made a clean getaway," replied Seskip Tonn, the unsettlingly strange, almost reptilian man who'd succeeded Golfe Lordion to become the University's Head Proctor, following his predecessor's resignation over the unfortunate Tragius Demonbinder affair. Seskip was Garonian, having been born on the huge island continent that lay off the east coast of Amafryka. All Garonians were strange, of course, thousands of years of cultural isolation having given rise to strikingly different architectures, customs and languages, but Seskip was even stranger than most. His skin was cold and grey, with just the suggestion of scaliness, and his eyes had an unsettling, unblinking gaze that reminded one of a lizard.

     It was a manifestation of spell related paramorphosis, of course. The tendency of a wizard's body to be transformed in some minor way by the magic constantly passing through it, but rarely were the effects so disquieting, so disturbing. It made people keen to avoid him if they could, even though he was no more unpleasant in general than any other proctor, and Seskip had learned to use it to his advantage. Staring at suspects with his reptilian eyes, saying nothing and listening without reaction to their increasingly desperate protestations of innocence until they were ready to say whatever it took to end the ordeal. The bravest, strongest willed men got the creeps just looking at him. Suffered nervous shivers just from the way he moved about with the smooth, deadly grace of a snake. It was no wonder that he was the most effective Head Proctor the University had had for centuries, and one of the longest serving.

     "He disappeared from a room with no other exits," he continued, tapping his long fingers on the wooden bench. "And apparently without using any form of magic."

     "Impossible!" snapped Pondar. "He got away from you and you're trying to make excuses for your incompetence." Pondar Walton was one of the few people in the valley who wasn't in the least bit impressed by the Head Proctor's sinister appearance and mannerisms. "And what about my useless assistants? Working in the very next room and he just strolls past them to wreck my laboratory. Three months of work ruined right under their noses!"

     "I understand they made an attempt to stop him," said Seskip, looking up at the taller man with eyes that glittered coldly with anger. He wasn't accustomed to being spoken to like this, a fact that bothered Pondar Walton not at all. High time he was, perhaps.

     "One of them was momentarily stunned and required the attention of a cleric of Caroli," the Head Proctor continued. "Without using magic, there is only so much one can do against a man who is bigger and stronger than you are."

     "Pah!" swore Pondar impatiently. "Get out of here and do something useful! Go catch him and lock him away! In the name of all the Gods, go and do your job!"

     Seskip hissed between his teeth, his hands clenching into fists by his sides, and then he swept out of the room, followed by the nervously trembling junior proctors. Seskip tended to take it out on his underlings whenever he got angry, which meant that they were probably in for a hard couple of days. Again, Pondar cared not at all.

     He surveyed the wreckage of his laboratory one more time and then stalked out of the building, roughly pushing aside anyone who got in his way. By the time he was far enough away from the building for his teleportation spell not to interfere with the other wizards' experiments, though, he had managed to calm down a little and was beginning to regret some of his words to the Head Proctor. Seskip would remember, he knew, and might look for a way to get back at him. He'd have to be careful for a while. Make sure not to break any of the University rules. Not even the smallest, most trivial regulation. Seskip Tonn could be cruelly vindictive when he wanted to be, and Pondar suspected that he wanted to be right now.

     He toyed with the idea of apologising to the Head Proctor, in front of his underlings of course, but his pride made him dismiss the idea almost immediately. So great was his pride, in fact, that he wouldn't even admit to himself that it was pride that was guiding his actions and he found himself searching for other reasons for his decision. Seskip needed his bubble bursting every now and then, he told himself. He needed reminding that he served the University. That he served the senior wizards, whose ranks he'd never been good enough to join.

     Like all the proctors, Seskip was basically a failed wizard who'd been forced to seek power and influence in other ways, and becoming an enforcer of the University's rules gave him a way to gain authority, even over other wizards. When he tried to lord it over a senior wizard, though, he was going too far and needed to have his true status pointed out to him, however painful that might be for him. Yes, he'd been right to speak the way he had, he decided, and he would be sure to repeat every word the next time they met. He nodded to himself in grim satisfaction before speaking the words of the teleportation spell and vanishing.

     He arrived in the office of the University's Director, Natan Crowley, interrupting a discussion he was having with the commanding officer of the Beltharan soldiers in the valley; a smart, splendidly uniformed man whose rank pins denoted him to be a Major and whose service bars testified to twenty five years in the service of the Emperor. No, the King, Pondar corrected himself with a sardonic smile. Pondar had only seen the Major a couple of times before, but knew him to be a fanatical loyalist who harboured a burning resentment against the former provinces that had now broken away, weakening his homeland. His name was Valeron Hort, and he was the son of one of the wealthiest and most influential families of old Belthar. Would he have risen to his present rank had he been the son of a farmer? the senior wizard wondered contemptuously. That was one question that could never be asked of a wizard. You couldn't become a powerful wizard unless you had real talent, no matter how rich and influential your family was.

     "I do hope I'm not interrupting," he said brusquely as the two men looked up in surprise. "I've just been looking at what's left of my laboratory. Three months of work down the drain." He dropped into a third chair in disgust.

     "I doubt it's that bad," said Natan encouragingly. "Most of that three months was spent in a process of trial and error. Now that you know the correct combination of vital elements, do you really have to go through it all again?”

     When elected he had been the youngest man ever to hold the most senior post in the University, having been voted in by the senior wizards following Justarian Westin's resignation, at the same time and for the same reason as the previous Head Proctor. Many of the most senior members of the faculty had gone at that time, either willingly or after receiving a gentle push, in an attempt to purge the University of its shame, incurred by its treatment of Tragius Demonbinder and the other 'rebels' during the Fourth Shadowwar.

     "You know as well as I that alchemy is not always reproducible," said Pondar unhappily. "Oh I can remix my most successful formulae, it's certainly worth a try, but if it doesn't work..." His fists clenched in helpless fury and the Director nodded sympathetically. "The thing I really don't understand," continued Pondar, rising from the chair and pacing restlessly around the room, "is that he knew exactly what to smash. There was an orb of magic storage in that room which would have looked very attractive to a layman. It would have looked very powerful and important, but the bastard ignored it completely and went for the phials in which I was keeping my completed compounds. He knew exactly what to hit to cause the maximum delay to my work. He knew!"

     "Inside knowledge?" asked Valeron, giving the director a meaningful look. "Then they..." His eyes flicked momentarily skyward, "know all about what we're doing here."

     "We don't know it was..." began Natan.

     Valeron interrupted him sharply. "Who else could it have been? Who else has a motive? And if they know, then who exactly do you think you're keeping it secret from?"

     "It was you who originally insisted on secrecy," Natan reminded him curtly.

     "Yes, but things have changed since then. You made a promise to the King that the project would be publicised, so that the world will see that Belthar is still a great nation. Now that we know..." Natan opened his mouth to speak but the soldier steamrolled over him. "Now that we know that they know, why do you still hesitate to keep your promise?"

     The Director gave a heavy sigh. "I had expected you to be the one to balk at a full disclosure. Very well, I will arrange it. We couldn't keep it a secret much longer anyway. With so many people involved in one way or other, bits and pieces are bound to leak out, and it'll only take one clever person to put it all together. Yes, very well, I'll make the arrangements. The sooner the better."

     "The King will be delighted," said Valeron, rising from his chair. "And now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me, I also have arrangements to make."

     He gave the low salute, the salute that officers give to important and distinguished civilians, and then spun on his heel and marched smartly out of the room.