The next time he woke up he was feeling much better, and when he sat up he was surprised to find that the beds on either side of him were empty. He was sure that they'd just woken up and gone somewhere else, perhaps to have a bite to eat, but he still felt anxious and worried. He put on a dressing gown someone had left beside his bed and hurried to the door in search of them.

     The door led into a corridor in which the acolyte was scrubbing the floor, singing a song that Thomas recognised; the tale of a young and very innocent pilgrim that Diana Winterwell, another cleric of Caroli and a very good friend of his, had liked to sing while performing some tedious, mundane task. She looked up and sat back on her heels when she saw him, a smile of pleasure spreading across her pretty face. "You shouldn't be up," she scolded him half heartedly. "How do you feel?"

     "Fine," replied Thomas, relaxing with relief. She wasn't acting as if anything bad had happened to Lirenna and Derrin. "Where are my wife and son?"

     "Down there," she said, pointing. "And take it easy! You're still not fully recovered."

     Thomas promised and hurried off in the direction indicated. The infirmary was as large as any to be found in a large city, testifying to the dangers of magic use, but at the moment it was almost empty, telling him that none of the great disasters that happened occasionally, despite the best precautions, had happened recently. It wasn't so large that he was in danger of becoming lost, though, and he soon found his way to the common room where Lirenna and Derrin were eating a light meal. They jumped up in delight when they saw him, and the three of them hugged each other tightly, glad they'd all come through the ordeal intact.

     "You were still asleep when we woke up," explained Lirenna a few minutes later when he finally let go of her. "The cleric said you needed to rest, so we thought we'd get something to eat and take something back for you, ready for when you woke up."

     "Thanks," replied Thomas, who suddenly realised that he was ravenously hungry. He pinched some of the food from Lirenna's plate, earning him a disgusted look from his wife and a giggle from his son. They chatted happily for a few minutes, all glad to be alive and together and to have safely (more or less) reached the place they'd been aiming for. Gradually, though, more serious matters began to occur to them and Thomas looked around nervously as he wondered who he could talk to. There had to be someone around here who could explain the situation to them fully.

     "I suppose I'll be staying here full time now," said Derrin absent mindedly, and both his parents nodded in agreement. Their former plans had depended upon their being able to teleport between Lexandria and the Overgreen Forest, and now that was out of the question. Not only Derrin, but all three of them would have to stay until they could find some other way of leaving. Thomas was glad in a way. Now he wouldn't have to endure entrancement every few weeks as they entered and left Haven. Now that the secret valley was a long and arduous journey away, trips to and from Lexandria would be limited to once a year, if that.

     "Perhaps we could borrow a flying carpet," mused Lirenna. "We could be back in Haven within the week. They wouldn't let us keep it, of course, and we wouldn't be able to travel so fast on future visits here." She turned to Derrin. "How would you feel if you knew you'd only see us for a couple of weeks every year or so?"

     "I'll be okay," said the boy confidently. He turned to Thomas. "You never saw your mum or dad for the whole five years you were here, did you?"

     "True," agreed Thomas, nodding. "Very true. But we were older than you when we came here, and quite a bit taller. You'd be in a class full of boys and girls bigger than you."

     "I'll be okay," repeated Derrin. "You said I was cleverer than other boys my age, and I was getting pretty bored with school back home. I'll like it better here."

     "I don't know," said Lirenna, though. "He has the body of a ten year old! He'll be smaller and physically weaker than pretty much everyone else in the valley! I'm not happy about it."

     "Maybe there's an alternative," suggested Thomas, and he was astonished to find that he was almost trembling with excitement. "What if all three of us stayed here full time?"

     Lirenna's eyes widened in alarm. "Full time!" she said. "You mean, not go back to Haven?"

     "We would go back, when Derry graduates as a wizard," said Thomas eagerly, "but until then we could stay here. They're always looking for wizards to work as assistants, both in the teaching buildings and in the research centre. Think about it! Worn out, retired wizards can't possibly do everything that needs to be done here. They need young wizards as well, but most young wizards are out in the world. Living their lives, building their reputations. People like us who have a reason to stay for a while are like gold dust to them. We'd be welcomed like tarts on a battleship!"

     Derrin stared at his mother hopefully, but Lirenna wasn't happy about it. "Two or three years of preparatory classes until he's old enough to begin his apprenticeship, then five years of magical education... We could be talking about seven, eight years away from Haven. Longer if he fails his exams first time. I don't know."

     "What's eight years to the shae folk?" pointed out Thomas. "You've got two, maybe three hundred years ahead of you. So has he. Besides, I'm not saying you can't ever go back at all during that time. We can go back for the occasional visit, say a few weeks each year. Long enough to make a week long carpet flight worthwhile." Lirenna nodded but still looked unhappy.

     "We don't have to decide now," added Thomas. "We'll be spending a few days here whatever happens. Maybe we'll learn something during that time that'll make up our minds for us."

     Lirenna nodded again, but the frown was still there and Thomas knew that she'd never accept the idea unless there was no alternative. Having returned to Haven with her brand new husband, she'd made up her mind to stay there for the rest of her life. Shae folk love the land of their birth more than anywhere else in the world, hating to be away from it even for a few days and, despite her human blood, Lirenna was totally shayen at heart. Lirenna wanted to be in Haven, and no matter how happy she might be elsewhere, she would always be a little bit unhappy every minute that she was away from it.

☆☆☆

     Kelsta pronounced them fit enough to leave the infirmary later that day, after one last examination to make sure they'd suffered no lasting harm from the scrambled teleportation spell. The cleric told them that a malfunctioning spell of any kind could cause changes to a wizard's body that might not show up for weeks afterwards and that these changes often manifested themselves in their early stages as a wart or a birthmark that hadn't been there before. The cleric stood them in the corner of the room, therefore, pulled a set of screens around them and told them to get undressed. The three of them then carefully searched each others' bodies, looking for any change that might have taken place.

     "I see from our records that you had grey eyes when you enrolled at the University," said the cleric, looking suspiciously into Thomas’s deep blue eyes.

     "That happened before we teleported," replied the wizard. "They changed colour slowly over the past few years."

     Kelsta nodded. "Spell related paramorphosis," he said. "Never heard of it changing someone's eye colour, though. Normally the passage of magic through a wizard's body causes things like pronounced growth of the nose and chin or the development of long spindly fingers. Plus, of course, accelerated ageing. Never heard of it changing eye colour."

     Thomas nodded absent minded and returned his attention to Lirenna's hair, combing his fingers through it as he tried to examine her scalp.

     They found nothing, and the cleric told them they could get dressed again. "I want you to repeat the examination every day for the next two weeks, then once a week for a year. If you find anything, even a pimple, come and see me immediately."

     "Every week for a year?" said Lirenna in alarm. "We might be going back to Haven in a few days and leaving Derry here. If so, we won't be returning for several months."

     "The examination needn't be performed by you," replied the cleric. "He's clearly old and bright enough to be able to monitor his own body. He just needs someone to look at his back, those parts of his body he can't examine himself. If you like, Sharla can examine him now, familiarise herself with his body, so that she'll spot anything the moment it appears."

     "No, that's all right," replied Lirenna with a glance at Thomas. "We'll stay. I know him better than any stranger ever could, with all due respect to your acolyte. If anything does turn up on him, or any of us, I've got a better chance of spotting it than anyone else."

     "Plus, of course, your shayen eyesight gives you an added advantage," added Thomas, barely able to conceal his delight at her decision. "It'll only be a few years," he said, putting a comforting hand in hers. "It'll fly by, you'll see." She gave him a brave smile in reply.

     "To be truthful, I owe you a few years out in the world, doing what you really want to do," she told him as the cleric left. "You've spent twenty years of your short human life in Haven with me..."

     "You make it sound like a prison sentence," said Thomas, taking her hand and squeezing it. "I was with the woman I love, raising a child I love. I have been blessed a thousand times more than I deserve."

     "But what you really love..."

     "Is you," Thomas interrupted her.

     "But what you really love is searching for new knowledge," Lirenna insisted. "I know you love me. You love me so much that you've given up your search for knowledge so that you can stay in Haven, with me, and I am so grateful to you for that, but now I owe you. I owe you a few years in which to satisfy the other half of your soul. You've promised me that we'll return to Haven as soon as Derry graduates, and I knew you well enough to know that you'll keep that promise, so we'll stay here, in Lexandria, until Derry graduates. However many years that is. You can have those years to satisfy your thirst for knowledge as much as you like, and then we'll go back to Haven together. The three of us."

     Thomas stared at her, the love building up inside him until it felt as if he would burst from it. "I thought I couldn't love you any more than I already did. And we will go back to Haven when Derry graduates. I promise you. We'll go back and spend the rest of our lives there."

     Lirenna beamed happily. "Who knows?" she said. "The interference affecting long range teleportation might disappear in a few months, allowing us to return to their original plans."

     Thomas's heart sank at the very idea, but he made himself smile. "Who knows?" he replied.

     They finished pulling on their clothes, and Lirenna took his hand again. "Come on then," she said. "Let's go see if the old place has changed."

     Thomas smiled down at Derry, who grinned back up at him, and then, together, they walked out into the sunlight.

☆☆☆

     Lexandria valley was exactly as they remembered it.

     Although it was called a valley, it was in fact a flat, circular low lying area several miles wide in the middle of the Blue Mountains where, several centuries before, several whole mountains had been reduced to rubble to fill in the deep, steep sided valleys between them. A dome of magical force covered the whole valley, maintaining a warm and comfortable climate inside, but outside howling blizzards lashed the ice covered, razor sharp peaks. A nightmare of snow and wind in which only the toughest, most formidable mountain creatures could survive. The wizards of Lexandria had chosen this location precisely because of its inhospitability, as a form of defence, following their decision to abandon the University's original site on the borders of the Kingdom of Agglemon where they had been beset by the turmoils and intrigues of the collapsing Empire. It could only be reached by flying or teleportation, and in all the centuries in which it had occupied its current location, no-one had ever managed to reach it overland.

     Within the valley were three clusters of buildings. One of these consisted of the teaching buildings where the apprentice wizards were trained and educated, and another consisted of the research buildings where senior wizards at the pinnacle of their careers conducted research into new and improved forms of magic. Most of these buildings were over a thousand years old and had originally been constructed for other purposes before being taken over by the wizards and transported to their current location. Buildings from all different cultures and historical epochs stood side by side. The winter palace of the Princes of Lecia beside a group of grain silos. A massive salted fish warehouse beside a three storey, fifteen acre mansion decorated with onyx and malachite. If the wizards required a sturdy fortress with thick stone walls capable of safely shielding the side effects of magical experiments, they searched the world until they found one, unoccupied and abandoned, not caring what its former purpose had been. They cared only about how well it would serve the new purpose they had in mind for it. The wizards cared nothing for history and architecture. Their minds were on higher things.

     Between the buildings were the gardens and avenues. Beautifully tended and cared for by a small army of gardeners helped by some of the apprentice wizards, either as part of their education or as a punishment duty. Some of the gardens were purely for relaxation and recreation, but most were used for the cultivation of rare and exotic herbs which the wizards used in the preparation of their magic. There was also a large farm somewhere on the campus, where the wizards bred and raised exotic animals for the same purpose, but Thomas couldn't see it from his present position.

     The third cluster of buildings, which formed a triangle with the first two around a small lake of sparkling, crystal clear water, was the village in which the valley's mundane (non magic using) population lived. This was where the gardeners went at the end of a long day, along with the cooks, the cleaners, the scribes, the carpenters, the masons and all the other professionals whose services were essential for the day to day upkeep of any human community. These people were employed on contracts of between three to ten years, following which they would return to their homelands and probably retire, as a tour of duty at Lexandria University was generally considered to be the pinnacle of one's career and they were usually so well paid that they never needed to work again. Spellcasters were banned from entering or even approaching the village, except in times of emergency, since the mundanes liked to have a place all to themselves where they didn't need to worry about the 'unnatural practices' that went on elsewhere in the valley. A few elderly wizards chose to retire there after having, for one reason or another, permanently and irrevocably lost the ability to use magic.

     Thomas and Lirenna stared out across the valley, the memories flooding back. "Thirty years," said Thomas in an emotional, breathless whisper. "Thirty years since I first came here. By the Gods, it seems like only yesterday! I was brought here by a wizard called Walliss. I remember, I was just a kid and I went round to his house one day, demanding that he take me to the library of Lexandria University so I could learn everything that was in it and become wise." He laughed. "Mum and dad almost had a fit when they found out. I think they expected to find me turned into a frog or something, but Walliss took me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes for a long time and then agreed to bring me here. You can imagine my parents' reaction."

     "But they came around in the end?" asked Lirenna with a smile.

     "They had to," replied Thomas, grinning and going a little pink with shame. "I was a real monster. I didn't give them a moment's peace. I think in the end they just wanted to get rid of me. They expected me to be back in a few days, as soon as I'd had the test and found that I didn't have wizard potential, but of course I passed the test and I ended up staying here for five years."

     Both parents stopped smiling as they remembered the test, and Lirenna put a protective arm around Derrin's shoulders.

     "Will it hurt?" asked the boy nervously. "The test, I mean."

     "Yes, it will," replied Thomas, stroking the hair on the boy's head, "but you won't be taking it yet, not until you're older. You're too young yet."

     "How much will it hurt? Will it hurt a lot?"

     "It doesn't last long," said Lirenna reassuringly. "Just a moment or two. Then it'll all be over."

     "I want to take the test now," said Derrin firmly. "I don't care how much it hurts. I want to know if I can be a wizard."

     Thomas and Lirenna glanced at each other, frowning with worry. "When you're older," said Thomas. "When you're ready to begin learning magic."

     "I want to know!" insisted the boy, however. "I can, can't I? If I want?"

     "The test might show that you can't be a wizard," said Thomas softly. "Are you ready for that?"

     "Yes," said the boy confidently. "I just want to know." He suddenly looked doubtful, though. "If I fail the test, will I have to go home?"

     "No, of course not," said Thomas reassuringly. "You can stay here for as long as you like. Lots of wizards bring their children here for their education, even if they can't be wizards, and you'll still be someone important when we go back to Haven. Maybe even one of the Elders one day."

     "I want to be a wizard," said Derrin firmly, though. "I'm going to take the test, and I'm going to pass it."

     "It's not the kind of test that depends on how hard you try," said Lirenna, looking worried. "If you fail, it doesn't mean you didn't try hard enough. Some people just can't be wizards, that's all."

     "I am going to pass!" said the boy, though, with utter conviction in his young voice. "I know I will. I want the test now. Right now!"

     Thomas and Lirenna looked at each other, sharing a silent conversation that would have taken over an hour to put into words. "All right," said Thomas, taking the boy's hand. "Let's go then."

     Derrin nodded eagerly and the three of them set off.