The next couple of days were spent passing through a region of rough terrain in which mounds of crumbling rock larger than houses were separated by narrow, treacherous gulleys filled with heather and scrubby bushes. The tiny specks of birds could be seen far overhead, making the sky seem vast and endless, making them feel small and vulnerable, and the only sound was the occasional cawing of a crow from far away, carried on the still air. They found themselves shivering with a nervousness they couldn’t identify and they hurried along the ancient road, eager to put this strange, haunted country behind them.

     They had their meals on the road, taking comfort from the man made surface beneath them, tangible proof that other people passed this way now and then. It was just after their midday lunch, the second day after entering the badlands, that Lirenna cried out and pointed off to their right, where the crows were circling about something hidden from view behind a rocky hillock. “Probably a dead animal,” said Shaun, rising up in the saddle to see better. “Just a goat or something.”

     “Maybe it’s a man,” said Diana, searching for a way off the road. “Hurt…”

     “It’s not a man,” said Shaun. “There’s nothing out here. No homesteads, no miners. There’s no reason for anyone to leave the road here.”

     “It wouldn’t take a moment to go see,” replied the cleric. She’d found a place where the road had partially collapsed, forming a ramp down to the uneven ground, and had dismounted. Shaun jumped down from his horse and joined her. “Okay,” he said, “but let’s be careful. You could twist an ankle easy as anything down there.” The others dismounted as well, and Matthew stayed to look after the horses while the others scrambled down to the boggy, heather covered ground.

     It took them some time to find a safe path to the corpse, and found it wedged in a narrow crevice between two large boulders, covered with crows who cawed angrily and lifted into the air as the travelers approached. It was human, little more than a skeleton, his clothes reduced to a few rags by the scavengers that had picked it clean. One of his legs was broken, and Diana gave a soft gasp of horror as she imagined what must have happened. The man picking his way across the boulders, losing his footing, falling and breaking a leg as he fell badly. He might have taken days to die, his cries echoing out across the empty, barren country while the scavengers edged ever closer, patiently waiting for the moment when he would be too weak to fight them off any longer. No-one said anything, but the same thought was in all their heads. He might have still been alive when they started to eat him…

     “Poor man,” said Diana softly, edging closer and saying a prayer over the corpse. “I wonder who he was. What in the name of the Gods was he doing, off the road?”

     “I imagine this would be a good place for bandits to hide their loot,” said Thomas, looking around curiously. Shaun looked up in sudden interest and reached for the remains of the man’s jacket, grimacing as he pulled it from under the desiccated corpse. Dried tissues glued it to the bones, and Diana frowned in disapproval as he gave it a couple of jerks to pull it loose. There were beetles and spiders in the pockets and he grimaced in distaste as he reached inside. The others watched with interest as he removed several small, personal items. A folding penknife, a firelighting kit in a small tin box, two lengths of string, needles and thread…

     He found a piece of folded paper, the folds partially gummed together by the damp and the mold. It would have to be praised apart very carefully if they weren't to destroy it in the process. Shaun, after brushing off dirt and cobwebs, carefully lift one corner to see what was on it. His eyes widened with excitement when he saw that it was a map, showing an area seemingly a few dozen miles across. A treasure map? Leading to bandits’ treasure? Diana was also staring with interest. A clue to her holy mission? She leaned forward with the others to see it better. Shaun tried to open it more, but the paper began to tear. “Careful!” warned Diana. “Be careful!”

     “I am being careful,” replied Shaun irritably, but he stopped pulling at the delicate paper and stared at it instead, visibly frustrated at his inability to reveal its secrets. “It must be a map of the local area. This guy must have been searching for something marked on it.” His eyes widened and sparkled with interest. “Something valuable.” He looked at the map again. “Perhaps if we wetted it with water, just enough to dissolve the muck holding it together, then used a knife to carefully prise it apart…”

     “We can't do that here,” said Thomas. “Let’s take it back to the road,” He was thinking of Matthew, all alone back there. All this talk of bandits had made him worry for his new friend. The others nodded, and they made their way back the way they’d come.

     Back on the road, they laid the map down on a flat slab of stone and dabbed at it with a damp rag until they were able to separate the layers of paper. Thomas hissed with frustration and annoyance as part of the corner tore, leaving as small piece of the map attached to the sheet below, but to their relief the rest came apart without too much effort. It was badly worn where the folds were, almost falling apart into four pieces, and had clearly been faded and grimy even before the death of its previous owner, but it was still just about readable and the first thing they saw was the name at the bottom. Vantarestin. The three men all gave great groans of disappointment and Shaun began to crumple it up. Diana grabbed his hands to stop him. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s Vantarestin?”

     “You know!” said Shaun impatiently. “Vantarestin! The great stronghold of Zebulon the wizard!”

     Thomas nodded in confirmation and Diana nodded as well as recognition clicked in her mind. “It’s a local legend,” said Thomas for the benefit of Jerry and Lirenna. “Everyone hereabout’s heard of them. Zebulon’s this kind of powerful, heroic wizard and he’s friends with Rhanov, a legendary warrior. They command a small army of mercenaries that keep the wild lands around the southern Copper Mountains safe from bandits and evil creatures. They’re said to have a hideout around here somewhere. A headquarters and training camp, kept secret so their enemies can’t find it. There’s all kinds of stories told about them, about their adventures…”

     “Like the time they saved Soaby, that’s a town, from Vazon’s outlaws,” added Matthew. “And brought healers to Suston when it was hit by greyneck fever, sneaking them through the quarantine cordon the empire’d set up. They didn’t always go around in one big army. They’d go around in groups of a dozen or so, patrolling the whole area. They say some of them came to our town once, just passing through.”

     “No-one’s seen them for quite a while, though,” said Shaun. “When I was a kid there’d be a new story every few months. Some great deed, people saved, that sort of thing. People are starting to talk, though. Wondering if something’s happened to them. It’s been ages since the last story. The ride to Caltucon. When was that? It was the same year Richard Dann’s boy was born. That was, what?”

     “Ten years ago,” said Diana thoughtfully. “I remember hearing people talking about it. “You think something’s happened to them?” Shaun could only shrug in reply.

     “So this shows where their hideout is?” asked Lirenna.

     “No!” said Shaun, laughing. “It’s a fake. There’s probably some guy in town selling dozens of these to anyone gullible enough to buy them. Maybe there’s more corpses out there, people tricked into looking for the place and coming to a bad end.”

     They decided to make camp, even though it was only around midday, and Thomas and the Winterwells chatted for hours as the wizard continued to catch up with the events of the past few years. The disappearance of Rhanov and Zebulon wasn’t the only significant event that had happened while Thomas had been in the University, it turned out. Ilandia had a new High Prefect, the previous one having incurred the Emperor’s displeasure in some way and having been called back to Tara, the fabulous City of Towers. Capital of the Beltharan Empire. The new chap, Hari Jaddow, although also Beltharan, came from an old Ilandian family. The Emperor probably hoped that this would endear him to the Ilandians, Shaun speculated. Perhaps help silence the nationalists who had been clamouring for the independence of Ilandia ever since the country had fallen under the control of Belthar and become nothing more than a province of the mighty empire. “If that’s what he thinks, though, then he’s got another thing coming,” said Shaun, grinning. “Some of the Ilandian soldiers we meet are quite adamant that they deserve their independence, and that they won’t rest until they get it.”

     “What’ll we do if the Shadow invades again, though?” asked Thomas. “How will we defend ourselves without the armies of Belthar?”

     “Nobody in our town thinks there’ll be another war,” said Shaun. “They say they learned their lesson last time, they won’t dare invade again.”

     Thomas remembered their experiences passing though the Overgreen Forest, though, but decided the subject wasn’t worth following up. He let the others take over the conversation, therefore, while he opened his spellbook and began studying it.

     Matthew, meanwhile, decided to take another look at the map. Even though it had to be a fake, it was still fascinating to examine. In one corner, marked very prominently, was the village of Lynchburn. A winding line, presumably signifying a river, snaked through it and up towards a line of upside down V's, which they assumed were supposed to be the mountains. A dotted line in another colour, a small road they assumed, also passed through the town, along the river a way, and then left it to connect to the Agglemonian great road near the bottom of the map. A few other features dotted the map. Trees, lakes, hills, and so on.

     In the very centre of the map was Vantarestin itself, marked by a crossed sword and wand, near a small hill. The only other markings on the map were a compass rose in the upper right corner, some strange writing along the top, and a scale, showing it to be about ten miles to an inch.

     "According to the map," said Matthew, "if we're where I think we are, then Vantarestin is very close to here, within a mile or two."

     "It can't be," said Shaun. "Look around, you risk broken bones just leaving the road, look at how that chap died. There’s no way an entire private army could come and go from here.”

     “There could be a path out there somewhere, straight and level enough to walk on. You’d never see it with all those hummocks and boulders. There could be a path leading right up to the front door and you’d never see it from the road. All you’d need is a couple of hundred yards of more or less traversable ground from the road to the start of the path.”

     “Maybe,” his brother conceded, “but I still think it’s a fake map.”

     "No," said Diana, confidently. "I'm sure that My Lady arranged for this map to come into our hands. Think what a coincidence it was that we should be the ones to find his body. I believe my Lady arranged it, as a way of getting this map to us. She intends that we go to this wizard's stronghold, and so we must find it somehow. The map is genuine, I know it."

     "All right, sis," said Shaun, handing her the map. "You find it."

     The three wizards, hearing the conversation, came over to watch as Diana peered at the map, searching for some detail that the others had missed, but with no greater success. "Are you absolutely sure of our position?" she asked.

     "Pretty sure," said Matthew. "Here we are on the road, here. These two hills marked here must be those two over there, and that river there must be the one we crossed yesterday."

     “I agree,” said Jerry. “That’s where we are all right.”

     "Yes," said Diana thoughtfully. "Well then, Vantarestin must be around here somewhere. We'll just have to split up and search until we find it."

     "And spend months searching, just like that poor chap did," said Matthew. "Face it, sis. If it was here, he'd have found it."

     "Besides," said Thomas, "we're going home, not searching for lost treasures and wizards' strongholds. I, for one, had enough adventure in Dermakarak to last me a lifetime."

     "My Lady wants us to find it, and we will," insisted Diana, however. "I will search for it all by myself, if necessary. I'll spend the rest of my life here until I find it."

     "It's no good arguing with her when she's like this," said Shaun to the three wizards, speaking from long experience. "Matt and I'll stay and help her look. She'll come to her senses in a day or two, and then we'll go home. You go on. It was nice meeting you, but it looks like this is the parting of the ways."

     Thomas looked at Lirenna, who shrugged carelessly, then at Jerry, who was studying the map. He looked up and nodded enthusiastically. Thomas sighed. "I suppose we can spare a day or so," he said. "We'll help you to look, for a while at least."

     Diana was delighted. "We'll find it!" she said excitedly. "The Lady Caroli will lead us to it!"

     They turned their attention back to the map. “What do you suppose this strange writing means?” asked Jerry, pointing to the inscription along the top of the map.

     "Probably nothing important," said Shaun, looking over his shoulder. "It probably means something like "Property of Zebulon the Great" or "The stronghold of Vantarestin." Something like that, anyway."

     "I'm not so sure," said Jerry, however. "It looks a little like magical writing to me. What do you think, Tom?"

     Thomas looked more closely at the strange writing. "You know, you could be right," he said. "Might be interesting to see what an Intellectus spell does to it."

     "Just what I was thinking," agreed Jerry. He opened his spellbook to check the words of the spell, and cursed under his breath. “The words have changed,” he said. “I'll have to memories the new words."

      Thomas and Lirenna nodded and opened their own spellbooks. They checked to make sure that the spell in all three books had changed in the same way, something they did routinely. If one person's copy of the spell had failed to change, that would mean that his copy had become corrupted and was no longer recognised by the Magister as a valid spell. It happened sometimes, Thomas explained to the Winterwells. Not often, thankfully, but if a powerful wizard had recently cast a high level spell in the area, some of the magic tended to hang around and could interfere with other spells cast in the same area, or with the activities of the Magister. The Winterwells nodded in bafflement. The idea that words written in a book could change all by themselves took a bit of getting used to.

     Thankfully, all three spells had changed identically, though. “Give us a few minutes,” said the tiny nome to the Winterwells. They nodded, and decided to have a bite to eat while they waited.