It took them nearly two months to cross the thousand miles or so between Pastora and the Megran Mountains, and on the way they had many perilous adventures. In Pastora, Shaun was accused of murdering a prominent and much loved nobleman and spent several days in a dungeon until the others were able to prove his innocence and bring the real murderer to justice. In Fengalla Forest, named after the large fungi that grew thickly among the rotting leaves, they helped protect the merchant caravan they were travelling with from an attack by a family of trolls, and while crossing the Tobion Desert they were captured by, and escaped from, a band of slave traders from the independent city of Fodda. In time, though, they made it to the Theocracy of Samnia, a narrow, barren land between the desert and the mountains, and booked themselves into a boarding house for a day or two to recover from the stress and strain of the journey and prepare themselves for the last stage of their quest.

     It was while they were enjoying the hospitality of the boarding house that they found themselves talking to a merchant who owned a chain of outlets in the nearby city of Devonia. They told him some of the things they'd done and the places they'd been in the past few months, and the merchant, a fat, middle aged man called Figgis, looked grave when they recounted their ordeal at the hands of the slave traders.

     "Yes, we're going to have to do something about Fodda," he said, stroking his short beard as he spoke. "No decent trader will have anything to do with that place, but unfortunately there are plenty of others who care for nothing but a quick profit. I have some friends in the Synod. Maybe I can talk them into enforcing a blockade of the city. No city is truly self sufficient, and a few weeks without some of the basic necessities of life ought to persuade them to be a bit more civilized."

     "The sooner that awful trade in human lives is stopped, the better," said Diana, whose three days chained up in a line with the others while being marched to Fodda had engraved themselves permanently into her memory. Only the fact that Fodda males considered human females to be repugnant in appearance had saved her from an even worse ordeal.

     For Thomas and Jerry, though, it had been the temporary loss of their spellbooks that had been the hardest to endure and for Lirenna, who'd had to endure both of these ordeals, those three days had almost proved unendurable. If Matthew's lock picking skills hadn't enabled them to slip their chains the night before reaching the city, they would probably have spent the rest of their lives in bondage, the men labouring in the fields or the mines until their backs broke and the women sold to humans to serve their pleasures for as long as their looks lasted. It was said that no-one taken into Fodda as a slave ever saw freedom again.

     "Anyway," said Figgis, "Let's talk of more pleasant things. I hear that Mala is finally getting back to normal, so I may finally be able to go back. There'll be a lot of merchants glad to be able to resume trade there."

     "What do you mean?" asked Thomas. "What happened there?"

     "You mean you haven't heard?" asked Figgis in surprise. "No, of course not. You've been down south, haven't you? Well, about three months ago a gang of outlaws appeared out of nowhere, about a hundred of them. Not ordinary outlaws, either. Some of them were highly skilled fighters, might almost have been regular soldiers from an army, and they even had a couple of wizards with ‘em. They blocked all the roads to and from Mala and robbed everyone who came their way, killing anyone who fought back. They took over every caravan they caught, taking them off north and sending the merchants back on foot, even taking their clothing if it was fur or silk. They waylaid the river barges too, stripping them of everything of value and scuttling them. For a month nothing got in or out of Mala, except by sea. It was as though they were deliberately trying to bankrupt the city, which is crazy. Intelligent outlaws just rob a merchant every so often, leaving most of them alone so that their victims survive and they can come back to rob them again and again.

     "Mala's army went out to try to get ‘em but, well, you know. Mala survives by trade, not by war. It's hardly got an army worth the name. The outlaws whipped ‘em, slaughtered ‘em almost to the last man. After that, trade through the city came to an almost complete halt as all the merchants switched to the Megran trade routes, and for a while it looked as though Mala was going to die.

     "Then, all of a sudden about two weeks ago, the outlaws packed up and left, just cleared out and disappeared. As soon as word got out, trade picked up again, and now the city's almost completely back to normal. No-one can understand it, it just doesn't make any sense. If they were out to bankrupt the city, why did they leave when they had almost done so, and if they weren't, why were they so extreme as to almost do so? Beats the hell out of me."

     The six travelers agreed that it was very strange, but Shaun and Thomas glanced at each other, both thinking the same thing, and they felt a cold tingling running down their spines. "The outlaws first surrounded Mala about three months ago,” said Thomas later, when Figgis had left. “That was about a week after we left the Emerald Oracle."

     "Yeah," said Shaun. "So if we hadn't run into the rocks and had made it back to Greenwing Island, we'd have got back to Mala just in time to run into them. They'd have taken your spellbooks for sure, and my sword. That's if they were just ordinary outlaws."

     "What do you mean? asked Diana. "What else could they have been?"

     "Do you remember what the Oracle said?" asked Shaun. "It said that the Shadowlord knows every time anyone speaks his name and can see them. See where they are and what they’re doing. And his name was spoken twice, once by the Oracle itself and once by me. He knew that we’re after the Sceptre. Maybe he took steps to try to stop us."

     "You mean those outlaws were Shadowsoldiers?" gasped Lirenna in horror.

     "Well, there's no way of knowing for sure, but I wouldn't be at all surprised," said Thomas. "They were only robbing people as a cover. They were searching everyone leaving the city to see if they were us. After fifteen weeks they decided they must have missed us, so they gave up and cleared off."

     "If that's so," said Jerry, "then they probably know that the Sceptre can only be used by a high ranking priest of Samnos. They'll go to the place where we'd be most likely to go to find one and wait for us there."

     "And the place we'd be most likely to find one is right here, in Samnia," said Matthew, his eyes widening in growing fear.

     "I think we'd better get out of here,” said Shaun. “Right now,"

     They dashed back to their rooms, packed, paid their bills and left straight away, not even waiting until morning. It was early evening and, after following the road for a mile or two out of town, they left it and travelled cross country for the rest of the day, making camp for the night in a patch of woodland out of sight of any road or habitation.

☆☆☆

     Early the next morning, three foreign looking men visited the hotel they had just left, asking the manager if he'd seen a group of six young people including a nome and a shae woman. The manager said yes, but that they'd left abruptly the night before. If they'd come a day earlier, they'd have caught them. The men thanked him and slipped out without another word, staring with disquieting intensity at anyone who paid them too much attention.

     As soon as they were out of town, one of them produced a curving ram's horn and blew a note on it, bringing half a dozen more horsemen galloping up from neighbouring villages. They spoke for a few moments, and then rode off together towards the mountains, whipping their mounts into a gallop.