Arroc gave a start of alarm when he heard the door opening, and just had time to lie down on the couch and pretend to be asleep before one of the red eyed, red costumed men entered, carrying the wizard gently in his arms. He laid him down on an empty couch, arranged his arms by his sides and then left, closing the door behind him. The trog lay still for a while longer, to make sure the room was empty, and then went over to examine him.

     Thomas seemed to be in the same condition as the others, in a coma from which he could not be roused, but the trog’s sharp eyes seemed to detect some subtle change in the colour of his skin, as if he’d spent a few weeks in a dark dungeon. “What have they done ter you, lad?” he murmured thoughtfully. “What are they going ter do to all of us?”

     A moment later he heard a groan from behind him and spun around in alarm, reaching for his scimitar, but it was only Shaun, waking up at last. The others were stirring as well, blinking and rubbing their eyes sleepily and staring in wary curiosity at the room they were in. “What happened?” asked Naomi blearily. “Where are we?”

     “I don’t know,” replied Arroc, rushing to her side. “How do ye feel?”

     “I’m not sure,” replied the black girl, sitting up on the couch. “How long have we been asleep?”

     “Hours,” replied the trog. “Most of the day, I think.”

     “I ache all over,” said Thomas, getting up off the couch and making an attempt to stand. “Like a tribe of ogres’ve been using me for a punchbag.”

     “Were we attacked?” asked Shaun. "Are you okay?" he asked Diana, staring at her anxiously.

     "Fine," the cleric replied, smiling reassuringly.

     "Are you sure? Who knows what they might have done to you while..."

     "Shaun, I'm fine!"

     “If someone wanted to harm us, then why are we still alive?” said Dennis. “They could have killed us while we were asleep.”

     “That’s odd.” said Thomas, fingering the neckline of his shirt curiously.

     “What is?” asked Diana as she checked the others for injuries and other possible lasting effects of the sleep spell.

     “My shirt,” replied the wizard. “I had my top button undone, I’m sure of it, but now it’s done up. And my belt’s buckled on the wrong hole.”

     He lifted his jacket to show the others. It was a good quality leather belt he’d been wearing since leaving the University. "Look. The iron buckle's worn a groove just under the third hole, but since I've been travelling all over the continent I've lost a good deal of weight and I now buckle it on the fourth hole. Now, though, it's buckled on the third hole again. It's all loose around my waist." He pulled the belt tight and buckled it more comfortably.

     “I think we were undressed while we were asleep,” he concluded, his eyes wide with worry. "I think that, when they dressed me again they just did up my belt at the deepest of the two grooves."

     Shaun looked up sharply and stared at his sister in sudden fear. Diana and Teasel paled at the thought of their modesty being violated while they’d been asleep, and they all began checking their clothing, looking for similar clues.

     “No, lad,” said Arroc, however. “Not us, just you. They took you away for a long time and brought you back just before you woke up.”

     “How do you know that?” asked the wizard.

     “The sleep spell didn’t affect me,” replied the trog, “but I pretended ter be asleep, thinking there might be a chance to escape and maybe rescue the rest of you, but I saw them take you and I saw them bring you back.”

     Thomas’s forehead furrowed in perplexity. “But why...” he began.

     He fell silent as the door opened again. They gathered fearfully in the middle of the room, the soldiers reaching for their weapons, the trog raising his scimitar and the wizard bringing the words of an attack spell to his mind, but they relaxed a little when it was only two elderly men who entered. Grey haired, stooped, wrinkled and dressed entirely in red.

     “Hold yer weapons, lads!” said the first old man, raising his hands and backing away fearfully. “Twas not us who put yer to sleep! Spare us!”

     “Who was it then?” demanded Shaun, pulling them into the room and checking the corridor outside. It was empty.

     “It was the castle,” replied the other. “This castle once belonged to a mighty wizard and contains all kinds of magics for its defence and the comfort of its occupants. It puts everyone to sleep who crosses the drawbridge. Everyone! Why, it even put us to sleep the first time we came here, didn’t it Jasper, me old fellow?”

     “Aye, so it did, Garnet me old mate,” replied the first. “We just picked ye up and brought ye in here so’s ye’d be comfortable till ye woke up.”

     The teamsters stared at the two old men suspiciously. It was on the tip of Arroc’s tongue to challenge them, to tell them that he knew they were lying, but he changed his mind at the last moment. He was going to assume that they didn’t know he'd been awake all along, and if that was true then they knew something that the two old men didn’t know they knew, and that gave them something of an advantage. Not much of one, it was true, but it was all they had. Best to play ignorant then, at least until they had a better idea what was going on.

     “Okay, we believe you,” said Thomas, who must have had the same idea. Arroc gave the others a warning glance. They took the hint and bit their tongues as well.

     “So, who’s in charge here?” asked Thomas.

     “Nobody, young’un,” said Jasper with a toothy grin. “The place is empty as a Lydian’s purse. We came across it, what, was it twenty years ago, Garnet me old mate?”

     “Twenty two years if it were a day, Jasper me old feller,” replied the other. “Thought we’d found our fortunes, so we did. What, a whole castle made of solid ruby? Till we found out we couldn’t break any of it off and there were nothing inside to steal. Full o’ magic it is, though, so we decided to move in permanent like, seeing as there were no-one to claim the place for themselves.”

     “There must be someone here,” protested Shaun. “Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to bring us here. For the past few weeks someone’s been interfering in our business time and time again so that we’d have no choice but to come here. Now who was it? Was it you?”

     “Us?” laughed Garnet. “Nay lad, tweren’t us. Maybe it were the castle itself that brought ye here.”

     “The castle?” exclaimed Dennis scornfully.

     “Why not?” agreed Jasper. “We’ve heard of some devices so magical they had a mind and soul all their own. Could not the castle be such a place?”

     “Or maybe ‘tis haunted by the ghosts of its former occupants and 'twas they who brought yer here,” added Garnet.

     We’re getting nowhere, thought Arroc impatiently. “We came here looking for something,” he said. “The Scrolls of Skava. Have ya heard o' them?”

     “Scrolls?” said Jasper, shaking his head negatively. “No, never heard of them. Don’t have a lot o’ use for scrolls, Garnet and me.”

     “Seein’ as neither one of us can read a word,” added the other, and the two of them burst into cackling laughter while the teamsters began to despair.

     “We were told, on the very highest authority, that they’d be here!” cried Thomas, a cold lump forming in the pit of his stomach. “They must be here!”

     “Well, if they’re anywhere they’ll be in the library,” replied Jasper. “That’s where all the books and papers are.”

     “A library!” cried Thomas in renewed hope. “Take us there at once!”

     “Please,” added Diana, giving the wizard a warning glance. “We’d be very grateful if you’d help us.”

     “Why, we’d be glad to,” replied Garnet, bowing low. “If ye’ll follow us...”

     The two old men led them out of the room, and as they walked Arroc tapped Shaun and Thomas on the elbows and gestured for them to fall back a couple of steps, so they could talk without the two old men hearing. “They’re lying,” he whispered. “There are at least seven other people somewhere in this castle. They carried us inside.”

     Shaun nodded. “Say nothing,” he said. “We’re clearly at their mercy here. If we pretend to be fooled, they may let us go.”

     The trog nodded but scowled unhappily as they followed the two old men deeper into the heart of the Ruby Keep.

☆☆☆

     “Here we are,” said Garnet when they reached the library. “We never come in here ourselves, but if what yer want’s anywhere in the castle, it’ll be in here.”

     They looked around the huge room in near despair, staring at long shelves packed with books, papers and scrolls. “It’ll take weeks to search through all this lot!” protested Dennis.

     “Have you got something better to do?” asked Shaun.

     “Maybe there’s a better way,” said Thomas, though. “Resalintas said that the scrolls might have had spells cast on them, for protection for instance, so a Reveal spell ought to show them up. When I cast the spell, pick up anything that’s glowing and put it here on the floor. Okay?”

     “Right,” agreed Shaun. “Ready when you are.”

     The wizard cast the spell, and a couple of dozen objects in the room began to glow with a cold blue light, some of them so brightly that it was hard to look at them. The others hurriedly ran about, picking them up from the shelves and tables and carrying them back to where Thomas was waiting, and he was pleased to find that they could eliminate most of them right away. Some of them were too large. Leatherbound books, for instance. Much too bulky to be the scrolls they were looking for. Others weren’t any kind of literature at all but statuettes and ornaments which he carefully placed to one side, wondering, as he did so, what kind of magic was on them. It occurred to him that he was probably handling some very valuable, powerful and dangerous magical artifacts, and that not only might they net him a very fair price at the next city they came to, they might also blow the lot of them to premature judgement at any moment.

     When the spell’s duration came to an end and the objects stopped glowing, they were left with only two possible candidates. Elegantly carved wooden caskets, precisely the sort of containers that Resalintas had said the scrolls would be in, and he tingled with excitement at the thought that they might finally have the objects of their search within their grasp. He picked one of the caskets at random and tried to open it.

     The hinges were rusty and stiff, but he slowly managed to force it open with a loud creak and a pop as some small obstruction gave way. Having gotten it open, though, he was disappointed to find that it was empty, and so after checking it for false bottoms and hidden compartments he put it aside and picked up the other.

     This one wouldn’t open at all, and had no opening anywhere on it for a key. His heart raced with excitement. Magically locked! This had to be it! What was more, just a few weeks before he’d have had no way of opening a magically locked box but, prompted by his experiences in the smallest moon, a spell to do just that had been one of the ones he’d learned at Redhill. Delighted by the opportunity to finally use it, he checked his spellbook to make sure the words hadn’t changed since the last time he'd looked. They were the same, and so he put his hands on the box and cast the spell.

    The casket flared with a nimbus of blue light and Thomas felt a tingle in his fingers that made him jerk them back in alarm. That hadn't happened when he'd tried the spell on Meatar's test box! Maybe locking spells had changed over the centuries and his counterspell didn’t quite fit. When he tried the casket again, though, the others watching excitedly over his shoulders, it opened easily and he breathed a sigh of relief.

     Inside were about twenty sheets of yellowing parchment bound together with faded red ribbon, and Thomas’s hand trembled with excitement as he carefully lifted them out. Could it be... He examined them carefully and found them covered with neat, closely written handwriting, but it was written in old Garonian, a language that had become extinct thousands of years before. He couldn’t read it.

     “Well?” demanded Naomi, her curiosity and patience both reaching their limits. “Is it the Scrolls of Skava?”

     “Can’t tell,” replied Shaun, leaning forward to see better. “Could be anything. Fairy stories, pages from a diary, a shopping list...”

     “I’ll have to translate them,” said the wizard. “Then we’ll know.”

     The black girl paced up and down in frustration and impatience. “Well, how long will that take?”

     “Just a few minutes,” replied Thomas, feeling a little smug as he remembered Meatar Halten, his tutor wizard in Redhill, telling him that he'd have no need for such a spell in wartime. "When the war's over and you return to civilian life, then you can learn any spell you want," he'd said. "Until then, it's war spells you want to learn." Thomas had been adamant, though, and Meatar had sighed in resignation as he'd handed over the spellbook containing the requested spell, hoping his young and foolish charge would return to sensible war spells once his itch was scratched.

     Thomas looked forward to telling him about this moment as he took his prism from his backpack and looked at the scrolls through it. Seen through the polished quartz, everything had a halo of rainbow colours and they intensified as he spoke the magic words. The prism began to glitter with tiny motes of glittering light and the rainbow colours brightened further, but then his view through the prism cleared. The writing on the scrolls was unchanged, but now he could read them as though he'd known the language all his life.

     “Well?” demanded Naomi again, but Thomas held up a hand to be left alone and Shaun ushered the others away from him. “He probably only has a limited time before the spell comes to an end,” he explained, “so he’ll want to be left in peace to read as much as he can. He’ll let us know in his own good time.”

     The others looked back at the wizard, totally lost to the world as he pored over the papers, and reluctantly moved away to explore the rest of the library.

☆☆☆

     “Where did you find them after all?” whispered Garnet to Jasper.

     “I didn’t,” replied his companion. “The original scrolls were destroyed in the Mage Wars. I had to summon an emissary of Tizar to tell me what was on them and then create duplicates. They’re as good as the originals.”

     “Let’s hope so,” said Garnet. “If they find out they’re duplicates, they may not trust what’s written on them.”

     “They won’t find out,” replied Jasper confidently.

☆☆☆

     The translation spell ended while Thomas was still reading the last few sheets, but that part was only a warning from the long dead priest, directed at other priests who might want to use the information. Thomas had had time to read all the important parts. The parts that mattered. He sat there, a look of horror frozen on his face until the others noticed and came racing back. “What is it?” demanded Diana in concern. “What’s wrong?”

     “He’s gone as white as a corpse!” declared Arroc.

     “Tom!” cried Shaun, grabbing the wizard’s shoulder and shaking him. “Tom! What is it?”

     Thomas looked up into the soldier’s eyes and swallowed nervously. His whole body began to tremble. “These are the Scrolls of Skava,” he said at last. “We’ve found them.”

     “What do they say?” demanded Naomi.

     Thomas said nothing for the moment, simply putting the scrolls back in the casket and closing it. There was a faint flash of light as the locking spells were re-activated.

     “Well?” repeated the black girl impatiently. “What do they say?”

     “I think it would be better if I didn’t tell you,” said the wizard, his face still pale with shock. “I think I understand why Resalintas wants the scrolls, and if I’m right then it’s something the enemy must on no account be allowed to find out.”

     “The less we know, the less we can reveal under torture,” said Dennis dryly. “Is that it?” Thomas nodded, looking embarrassed.

     “But Resalintas said it was all right for us ter know,” pointed out Arroc. “So that we could return the information ter him should the scrolls be lost or destroyed.”

     “If that happens, I can give him the information,” said the wizard, “but we have to balance it against the risk of the enemy learning it. I have to ask you to simply trust me on this. Please?”

     “That’s good enough for me,” said Shaun. He turned to the others. “Di and Me’ve known Tom for a long time. We trust him completely. If he says its better for us not to know, then I don’t want to know.”

     “That goes for me too,” agreed Diana.

     Thomas blushed with embarrassment and gratitude. The others grumbled about it, all of them clearly bursting with curiosity, especially Naomi who looked for a moment as though she were going to challenge him further, but in the end even she gave in and agreed not to ask again. The wizard thanked them, and promised them that the time would come when he would be able to tell them. “If I’m right, then it’s something that could turn the tide of the war,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”

     “Would you have any objections if we took the scrolls with us?” Diana asked Jasper and Garnet.

     “They’re no good to us,” replied Jasper, spreading his hands. “Neither of us being able to read a word an’ all. Be my guest, young lady.”

     “Thank you,” said the cleric, smiling in gratitude. “I hope you find happiness here together. May the Gods watch over you and keep you safe.”

     “And you too, young lady,” replied Garnet, bowing low. “Lots of luck wherever you go and whatever you do.”

     They left immediately, in case the real owners of the castle changed their minds and decided to hold them prisoner. Thomas was especially anxious to leave, being acutely conscious that something had been done to him while he’d been asleep. Jasper and Garnet seemed friendly enough, but he wasn’t going to risk alerting them to the full extent of his knowledge in case they suddenly turned nasty, in which case he suspected that they would turn out to have powers and abilities totally beyond their abilities to resist. He just wanted to get out of there, and breathe the clear, fresh air under the open sky again. They said their farewells, therefore, and the two old men showed them the way back out into the courtyard.

     The sky was darkening as they crossed the drawbridge, the yellow sun having already dropped from sight behind the mountains, and most of the light came from a pair of large comets lying close together in the sky above them. Once again Thomas felt a faint tingle as they passed through some kind of barrier or threshold, and then they were out and standing on the reassuringly solid rocky floor of the valley. They paused for a moment and looked back at the Ruby Keep, its topmost spires and turrets still gleaming as they caught the dying rays of the setting yellow sun and the first rays of the rising red sun.

     Thomas had a strange feeling as he gazed up at the walls and battlements, the thin arrowslits and the fluttering pennants with their design of the two legless dragons. He had the unmistakable feeling that the first chapter of his life had come to an end, and that a new chapter had just begun. He imagined some historian of the future writing the story of his life and ending the first volume with the words ‘Little did he know that his life would never be the same again.’ It was true, he realised. He did feel different, although he couldn’t have said in what way. It was as though he were a little less then he had been before. Or perhaps a little more.

     They did something to me in there, he thought fearfully. But what? And why? Maybe I should have asked Jasper and Garnet. Maybe I still can. He took a step forward, but stopped when he realised he was too afraid to go back in. The not knowing was bad enough, but the prospect of going through it again was worse. Besides, he had responsibilities. They had to get the scrolls back to Resalintas.

     “Come on, we’re wasting time,” he said therefore, and he led the way back towards the mouth of the valley.