The six young travellers arrived back in the town of Clarrin's Claim in the evening of the next day and booked into the same rooms they'd had before, but this time paying with their own money. Their arrival caused a commotion, and they were soon surrounded by a crowd of curious people demanding to know how the expedition had gone. The only way to get rid of them was to tell them, and so that evening almost half the town packed itself into the inn's common room to hear the tale, told a bit at a time by each of them in turn. The innkeeper was delighted, and made a small fortune in drinks and snacks for the avid listeners. He was so delighted, in fact, that he waived all charges for their rooms and gave them all their meals on the house.

The townspeople were disturbed by the news that the expedition had been a failure and that Dermakarak was still ruled by evil creatures. The trog village was, after all, only two days away, putting Clarrin's Claim well within reach of raiding parties from there, but the news of a follow up expedition cheered them somewhat. The townspeople had mixed feelings about trogs, but would much rather have them as neighbours than shologs and buglins.

Telling the tale made Thomas start thinking about the clay man again. "I wonder how many of those creatures there are in the world," he wondered aloud to the others later. "Who knows how many princes, emperors, noblemen and bankers are really clay men masquerading as real people. It makes you think, doesn't it?"

"There has to be some way of telling a clay man from a real person," said Lirenna.

"Maybe there is," said Jerry. "That one we killed had pink blood. Perhaps all we have to do is scratch a suspect and see what colour his blood is."

"Unless it can change the colour if its blood as easily as the colour of its skin," said Shaun.

Even so, they each agreed to give a pinprick of blood, just in case. Each one was crimson red, but Shaun's suggestion still worried them. Jerry pointed out that a clay man might be able to imitate their physical appearances and use its ESP abilities to duplicate their memories and mannerisms with ninety percent accuracy, but that it could not duplicate their spellcasting abilities, or obtain the true access to a God enjoyed by a real cleric and that therefore this eliminated the three wizards and Diana as suspects. Matthew then pointed out that he hadn't seen any of them cast any spells since leaving Dermakarak, and that anyway, how did they know that clay men couldn't cast spells? In the end, they decided that they simply had to trust each other, but the spellcasters and the fighters still kept a close eye on each other and it wasn't for several days that they finally relaxed and accepted that they were all who they appeared to be.

The next morning, Lirenna joined Thomas and Jerry in their room while they examined the treasures they'd taken from Mikos's body. They laid his spellbook, his ring, his other jewellery and his staff on Thomas's bed while he cast a reveal spell on them. To their disappointment the only things that glowed with a magical aura made visible were the spellbook and the ring. All the rest were nothing more than perfectly ordinary jewelry and a prettily carved wooden staff. "Damnation!" swore Jerry. "I was sure the staff would be magical! I mean, why else do wizards carry staves, for heaven's sakes? Damn him!"

"We should have expected it," said Lirenna, also with a trace of disappointment in her voice. "He was all show, all glitter but no substance. Still, at least we have a magic ring."

"And a captured spellbook," said Thomas. "I suppose, as good little law abiding wizards, we should really return it to Lexandria for examination and evaluation. What do you think?"

"Well I'm not going to open it," said Lirenna, "and if you are, please give the rest of us plenty of warning so we can clear the area." The others knew what she meant. Wizards were extremely jealous and protective of their spellbooks, and often impregnated them with magical booby traps. An unauthorised person opening it would, unless he was very skilled and very careful, set it off and get himself blown into the next world.

"Me neither," said Jerry. "Tempting though it is, I vote we send it to Lexandria. All the brownie points we'll get will come in handy when we go back for further education."

"I suppose you're right," agreed Thomas with a disappointed sigh. He stroked the leather binding, but stopped at the thought that even this might be enough to set off some kind of defensive spell. "I'll hire a courier to take it to the nearest Beltharan garrison. That'll be Felltree, won't it? The regimental wizard is bound to be an old Lexandrian, all the biggest countries only hire University wizards. He'll take it the rest of the way, if he doesn't decide to keep it for himself."

"If he does, that's his lookout," said the demi shae.

Thomas nodded, but he was frowning unhappily, still visibly tempted. "Just think of all the high level spells there must be in this book," he said. "We could just hide it under the bed until we're good enough to use them."

"Just think of being turned into a pile of ashes in the prime of your life," said Lirenna seriously. "Tragius and Rogin will teach you all the spells you want when you go back, with hardly any risk to your life."

"Yeah, I know, you're right," said Thomas with a sigh. "Just thinking, that's all." He went and asked the innkeeper for a sheet of paper, a bottle of ink and a pen, with which he wrote a brief letter to Tragius, giving their names and explaining how they had come by the book. "You'd better apologise for the loss of the carpet while you're at it," said Lirenna with a smile. "They're probably still waiting for it."

"Are you serious?" replied Thomas. "Our story is that we sent it back, and it must have gotten lost on the way. Nothing to do with us. Okay?"

"Fine," said Lirenna with a smile, "if you think he'll believe it."

Thomas carefully wrapped the letter and the book in a leather blanket, binding it with a length of rawhide. Finally, he wrote the words "For the attention of Tragius Demonbinder, Lexandria University" on a sheet of paper and tucked it under the binding, hoping it wouldn't come adrift along the way. "There," he said when he'd finished. "I'll have it sent off when we leave.

They decided to let Lirenna wear the ring. Partly from a sense of chivalry, but mostly because they had no idea what it did, and considering it had probably been made by its last owner, an externum, a bumbling amateur, they weren't in any great hurry to find out. It appeared to be too large for her finger at first, but as she slipped it on it shrank until it fit her snugly, startling her and making her pull it off again, just to make sure she could. Reassured, she put it back on again, but she was still feeling a little apprehensive about it, remembering Rogin's lectures about cursed and tormented artifacts, created by malicious or incompetent wizards, that did all kinds of horrible things to their owners. This ring seemed benign, though, unless it carried a much more subtle kind of curse, which didn't seem likely. Mikos hadn't been a very subtle person. She wondered again what it did, and decided that she'd just have to wait to find out.

When they set off, later that morning, half the town turned up to see them leave. They were quite touched by the enthusiasm, but decided to keep a rather lower profile in future, if possible. It didn't do to be quite so well known and popular when they were still so young and inexperienced, still very vulnerable to any ambitious farmworker who might want to make a name for himself by killing a wizard. Many far more powerful wizards and mercenaries had been killed by lucky novices because they had become too famous too soon.

It took them four days to return to the busy Ilandia to Callinia road, whereupon they set off west along it, the wizards resuming their interrupted journey to Thomas's home, the Winterwells accompanying them. The further they went, the more unhappy the two brothers became about how far they were getting from their home, to which they'd been hoping to return as soon as the expedition to Dermakarak was over, and Shaun repeatedly urged his sister to come to her senses. "Are you still set on this mad venture?" he asked her one day as they rode side by side along the massive earthwork that was the Agglemonian Great Road. The ground sloped down away from them on both sides to become dense, impenetrable forest, the trees rising high and arching over until only a thin strip of sky was visible directly above them. "We were nearly killed in that trog town, and we're no nearer to any holy mission."

"It will come," said the young cleric confidently. "She has chosen us, the six of us, for a great task."

"That reminds me of a curse I once heard in Lexandria," said Jerry. "May you be of interest to the Gods."

Diana was furious. "It is a great honour to be chosen for a holy mission!" she cried. "You should kneel down and give thanks for the privilege, as I have done many times!" She simmered for several miles, ignoring anything said to her or else snapping out with vitriolic bitterness, creating an atmosphere of uncomfortable tension which was only relieved when Jerry finally apologised, to everyone's great relief. Diana accepted the apology with great dignity and formality. "My Lady understands that mortals are weak of mind and incapable of understanding the true extent of Her love and compassion," she said. "She makes allowances accordingly, but only up to a point." Jerry took the hint. It was easy to forget that this slight young woman was the personal representative of a Goddess whose power, although of a benign and loving nature, was not to be taken lightly.

Over the next few days they covered over a hundred miles, during which they found themselves approaching the mountains again. They passed a village that contained one of Haven's safe houses, occupied by a man and his wife who knew the location of the secret valley and who had been conditioned, of their own free will, to die before revealing the secret. If Lirenna wanted to go home, she would have to make contact with these people, who would arrange her transportation back to the valley, in a state of deep hypnotic trance so that she would remember no part of the route. She considered doing so, a sudden longing to see her homeland again rising strong within her, but after some strong soul searching she decided to keep her promise to Thomas and meet his parents first. It was a decision that changed her life forever, and that she often pretended to regret.

Riding along on horseback, they occasionally passed other travelers walking towards Ilandia, and they noticed that there were considerably more of them than there were moving in the opposite direction. When they stopped to chat with them, they found that their story was almost always the same. They had lived all their lives in the relatively wild, lightly populated lands between Ilandia and Callinia, scratching out a life in the dense forests that characterised the area and braving the wild animals that roamed there. In recent years, however, it had slowly grown more and more dangerous, with tales of neighbouring homesteads and even entire villages being raided by shologs, buglins, goblins, ogres, dramlins, bakkles, darkstalkers and even trolls, such tales growing more numerous with each passing year. Some of the people they talked to had even been raided themselves and had lost family members to the violence, and even those who hadn't been directly affected had been scared by the stories circulating between the various isolated communities until they had finally decided to take refuge within the presumed safety of the borders of Ilandia. More and more people were also moving inside the walls of the independent cities, walled city states owing allegiance to no country or nation, but these were not thought to be too secure as they were all too easily cut off and surrounded.

This news bothered the six travelers, as it tied in with what Darris had told the three wizards while they were convalescing in his cabin. Still, it might not be as bad as all that, thought Thomas. People always thought that things were better in the past, and looked back to an imagined golden age of their youth. This might be the same kind of thing.