A few minutes after watching the pirate ship sink, Silan returned to let the companions out, saying that they could go up on deck now if they wanted. No sooner had they done so, though, than a messenger arrived to tell them that the Captain wanted to see them right away. Anxiously wondering what he wanted, they followed the messenger to the Captain's cabin, which turned out to be just up a flight of steps and around a corner.

     It was about the same size as a stateroom but much more intensively decorated with all the junk that a travelling man picks up during a busy lifetime, mostly mementoes of his seafaring life. The flags of fourteen pirate ships hung on the wall behind his desk, along with a leather lifebelt nearing the word Swordfish. They guessed it was a momento of another ship Captain Temple had commanded. Maybe his first command. Mounted on a plaque on another wall was a crossbow bolt stained with dried blood.
     Elsewhere, the walls were covered with maps and charts, which Thomas studied in fascination, and a colourful bird chatted away to itself on a perch in the corner. The bed was partly hidden behind a curtain and opposite it was a writing desk and chair facing the wall. Above the desk was a velvet curtain with a yellow cord hanging beside it that opened it when pulled.

     As the Captain turned the chair around and sat down in it, Shaun and Matthew noticed their weapons locked in a wall cabinet that also contained a collection of other swords, knives and scimitars. They stared at it hungrily.

     The Captain stared at Thomas, Jerry and Lirenna. "Tell me the truth now," he commanded. "Are you wizards?"

     They stared at each other in dismay, and Thomas confirmed in a flat, hopeless voice that they were. There seemed no point in denying it any more. "May I ask how you knew?" he asked.

     "Admiral Malgaard told me," said the Captain, watching them carefully. "I had to report to him about the pirate ship and I mentioned you at the same time. He recognised your descriptions and said that you were the ones who'd brought the warning of an imminent fourth Shadowwar to Fort Battleaxe. Is this correct?"

     The effect of this statement on Diana was like the yellow sun coming out from behind the clouds. "You mean they believed us?" she asked joyfully, beaming with delight.

     "Apparently, you made such an impression that they sent a special patrol into the Shadow to check your story, and they confirmed it, those that returned. Consequently, the Empire is now going flat out to prepare for an invasion whilst trying not to let the enemy know that we know. If they knew, they'd advance their plans and invade immediately, without giving us the time we so desperately need. What that means is that they must not know of our mission, and..." He looked directly into Diana's eyes. "You must stop warning everyone you meet. There's no further need, and you'd be endangering not only yourselves, but all of us. Do you understand?"

     "Yes, of course," agreed the cleric, still beaming. "It's such a relief, knowing that something's being done."

     "Yes, I expect it is," said the Captain dryly. "Considering the circumstances, therefore, I'm going to take a risk and let you continue with your mission. I'm going to trust you not to mention to anyone that there is a Beltharan warship south of the Lonely Isles. Can I trust you?"

     "You can, I swear it in the name of the Lady Caroli," said Diana, looking straight back into his eyes. "And my brothers and friends swear too. Don't you?" She fixed each of them with her eyes in turn, and they all solemnly echoed her pledge.

     "All right," said the Captain with a reluctant sigh. "I'll have you flown ashore on a spy platform immediately. If you've left anything in the staterooms, you'd better go get them."

     He unlocked the cabinet, gave them back their weapons, and then led them to the landing pad where a couple of able seamen were washing down the deck. Nearby, another man was oiling the swivel mount of one of the crossbows mounted on the spy platform that rested there. The ship carried four of the aerial reconnaissance platforms and kept one in the sky at all times, patrolling the seas and skies around the great warship, alert for any threat that might manifest itself. Another was kept on constant standby, ready to lift at a moment’s notice should the need arise, but it was rare for two spy platforms to be aloft at any one time. When the Captain gave the order for the standby platform to prepare to take off, therefore, the duty ensign looked surprised for a moment but nonetheless dashed off to summon the flight crew. He returned a few minutes later with Silan, Rogor and Quesin, the same crew that had brought the six travelers to the ship three weeks before.

     "I want you to take our friends here over to the shore, as far north as you can manage, and let them go free," said the Captain, to their astonishment. "They are on a mission of the gravest importance and are to have all the help and support we can give them."

     "Yes sir," said Silan, surprise and relief showing on his face. "May I say that I'm pleased you were able to work things out between you."

     "Thank you, Mister Silan," said the Captain, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "I'm pleased to have your approval. Now please prepare to lift."

     They stepped aboard and Quesin took his place in the flight chair. The two wizards went through a brief checklist, checking the equipment and supplies that regulations said were to be carried on every trip, everything they might need for survival and defence if they were forced to land in hostile territory. When they'd finished, Quesin looked enquiringly at the Captain, who nodded that they were still go for launch. The wizard gave a hand signal to the ensign, who released the clamps holding the spy platform safely to the deck, and then he closed his eyes in concentration. The spy platform rose slowly and gracefully into the air until it reached a height of about a thousand feet, high enough to be invisible from sea level. Then it moved off to the north east, the six travelers watching avidly as the warship dwindled behind them, disappearing into the hazy distance.

     "I'm glad you were able to work things out with the Captain," said Silan, grinning broadly. "He's not really so bad, as they go."

     "No," agreed Diana. "He's a trusting, reasonable man. I only hope we don't betray his trust."

     "Is that likely?" asked Silan, suddenly concerned.

     "No, of course not," said Shaun, putting an arm around her shoulders. "My little sister here just worries a little too much sometimes, that's all."

     "How far can you take us?" asked Thomas, to change the subject.

     "Not far, I'm afraid," said Rogor. "It depends on the stamina of the wizard flying us. Quesin here is one of the best, but even he can only keep going for about eight to ten hours at a time. He'll take us as far as he can, drop you off, and then I'll fly us back. I'm not quite as good as he is, but we'll be lighter without you."

     "Well, don't take us too far then," said Diana. “I wouldn't want you falling into the sea before you got back."

     "Don't worry," said Rogor with a grin. "We know our limits. Don't worry about us."

     They flew on for hour after hour. They kept above the clouds where possible, in case the dull, camouflage paint covering the steel platform had worn away and reflected sunlight made them visible from the ground. As they approached the shore they began to see several ships below them, and once they saw two ships lying side by side, smoke rising from them as they exchanged fire. They couldn't tell which one was the pirate ship, but wished the merchants luck in fighting them off as they flew past.

     A few minutes later they saw land ahead of them. A rocky beach against which the waves of the high tide crashed rhythmically. Behind it lay a belt of scrubby grassland that gave way to the outer fringes of Fengalla Forest, one of the largest areas of continuous woodland in the known world. As they turned north to follow the coastline Thomas took out his atlas and tried to pin down their position, while the others peered over the side to watch the land sliding past below. The forest canopy was almost unbroken, but here and there were clearings of open farmland in which Lirenna's sharp eyes spotted strangely regular patterns of furrows and ridges. Jerry grinned in recognition, and asked Quesin to take the platform lower, so they could get a better look. The naval wizard wasn't happy with the idea, but Silan added his voice to the request and with a sigh the wizard agreed.

     The ridges, they saw, were four or five feet high, with one face consisting of a vertical wall of wood and stone while the other side sloped gently away to merge into the cultivated farmland. The vertical faces had doors and windows and faced pretty gardens of mown grassland, flowers and hedges. Smoking chimneys poked up all over the place, in ridges, farmland and gardens, clearly indicating that the whole clearing was honeycombed with tunnels a few feet below the ground.

     "Nomes!" laughed Jerry, recognising the basic layout.

     "Yes," said Silan. "We're just a little south of Pastora, the homeland of the western nomes. Those down there are the outlying villages." He looked down at Jerry. "I've always wondered what it must be like to live in holes in the ground. I can only see windows in the ridges, the rest of it must be in total darkness."

     "It's never totally dark," replied Jerry, "and my people can see in what you would consider very low light conditions. We can even see people by the warmth of their bodies. In fact, most of my people have such sensitive eyes that they can't endure full daylight and only venture out at night."

     "You seem able to endure full daylight well enough," said Rogor.

     "I've become acclimatised to daylight over many years," replied the tiny nome, "but my heat vision is still as good as it ever was."

     "So what's it like to see your homeland again?" asked Silan.

     "Oh, that's not my homeland," replied Jerry. "I'm an eastern nome, from Nomehome, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. It's a separate nation with separate customs and habits, but there's quite a bit of traffic and travel between our two countries, enough that the basic culture's stayed more or less the same despite the fact that they split off from us so many hundreds of years ago."

     "I thought you split off from them," said Lirenna with a wicked grin, earning her a scowl of annoyance from the tiny nome.

     "They split equally when they were forced to abandon an ancestral homeland in the Vale of Yoll," explained Thomas to the platform crew. "Each likes to think that they embody the core of their civilization and that the other broke away..."

     "They did break away from us," insisted Jerry indignantly. "Our migration took us to Nomehome first, and the Pastorans carried on westwards about a century later."

     "But the records are so sketchy that no-one's really sure any more," continued Thomas. "I read about archaeological excavations in Pastora that suggest nomish occupancy long before the first recorded settling of Nomehome..."

     "Buglin holes!" declared Jerry indignantly. "Pastoran dwelling ridges are so primitive compared to ours that they're easily mistaken for buglin holes."

     The others nodded their acceptance while struggling to keep straight faces, and Matthew had to look away in case his self control failed.

     It was just a few minutes after that that Rogor told them they'd gone just about as far as they could and that the time had come for them to look for a landing place. The flying disc moved back towards shore and they leaned over the side, looking for a clear, deserted stretch of beach. When they found one they hovered over it for several minutes while they searched all around, making sure there was no-one about to see them, and when they were confident that they were unobserved Rogor guided Quesin in to a soft landing on the golden sand.

     Quesin opened his eyes, stretched luxuriantly and rose slowly, arching his back to ease the stiffness out of his joints. "We'd better start back right away," he said. "The ship's getting further away all the time and they won't wait for us."

     "He's right," agreed Silan. "I'm afraid there's no time for a long goodbye. I wish you luck, long life and happiness in whatever you do."

     "We also," replied Diana. "May the Gods favour you and watch over you."

     Diana and Lirenna exchanged hugs with the seamen, and the men shook hands solemnly. Then they opened the gate in the railing around the disk and stepped down onto the sandy beach. Rogor sat down in the flight chair, closed his eyes and concentrated. As the disk rose, the six travelers waved up at it, and Silan and Quesin waved back. Then it rose sharply and was soon lost in the clouds.

     "Well, we'd better get going," said Shaun. "We're also racing the clock. The world needs the Sceptre."

     They crossed the sandy beach to the scrubby grasslands beyond and, rather than risk the perils of the forest, followed the coastline to the north. Sooner or later they were bound to come across a fishing town with a road into Pastora, where they could join up with a merchant caravan. They couldn't make up the time they had lost, but at least they were back on the right path. They were back on the quest for the Sceptre of Samnos.