"These all date from the Unification period," said Galia, indicating the display of crystal glasses and silver tableware in the glass cabinet. "Previously, Garon was divided between half a dozen eternally warring countries, but they were forced to unite to face the Amafrykan threat as the colonies on the mainland grew stronger and pushed further along the coast..."

     "Perhaps the history lesson can wait," said Saturn impatiently. "Our interest lies much further back in time than this. What are the oldest relics you possess?"

     "Those would be the archaic fragments," said the girl, bristling slightly at the wizard's brusque manner. "This way."

     The slender, dark haired woman led them into another room and to a single cabinet standing in the corner. Above it, on the wall, were several maps of the island continent showing what the experts thought it had been like during various parts of its history. The earliest showed the entire northern half of the huge island covered by ice sheets, with a handful of human communities clustered along the southern coast. That, a small label explained, had been the era of the Domination Wars, in which humans and shologs had fought each other for centuries for the right to be the dominant race. If humanity had lost that struggle, the sages said, humans, if they survived at all, would probably be a degenerate, nomadic race today, desperately trying to scratch out a living in the few areas of wilderness left between the mighty sholog cities. The reverse of the situation today.

     Thomas shuddered at the thought, but it was the second map that caught his attention. It showed the island continent several thousand years later and showed that humanity had spread across much of the southern half of the huge land mass, although there were still so many other powerful races occupying neighbouring lands that mankind was hemmed in. Safe, man's future secure unless some unimaginable catastrophe struck, but temporarily prevented from spreading further.

     Many of the cities in the human domain caught Thomas's attention. Yinnfarsia, Sholl, Agromay... His eyes roved the map, searching the area adjacent to the Great Northern Range, and there it was. Domandropolis. The city of the rak Khalkedon and, later, the Gem Lords. Small compared to its neighbours and distanced from them so that it was right up against the Borderlands, the tenuously populated regions on the fringe of human occupancy where sholog raids were common and only the hardiest could survive. He stepped closer to the map, so that his eyes were only inches from it, and searched for the landmarks of Tak's life, but the map wasn't detailed enough to show them and eventually Saturn cleared his throat impatiently, bringing his attention back to the business at hand.

     He turned his attention to the cabinet and saw that it contained only a few fragments of pottery and heavily rusted scraps of metal. "This is all we have from that remote age," said Galia apologetically. "They've been dated by the best diviners and definitely date from the eighth millennium before unification." She indicated a signed testimonial pinned to the wooden backboard. A browning sheet of paper on which a spidery sprawl of faded writing could just barely be seen.

     "No-one doubts the authenticity of these objects," said Saturn, barely glancing at the worthless fragments. "The era we're interested in predates even this, however. Do you know of any evidence of a civilisation even older than this?"

     "Not necessarily a human civilisation," added Thomas, in case any objects that had been unearthed had been mistaken as belonging to one of the planet's previous tenants. "Anything old, really old, that's clearly of artificial origin. Maybe something so weird looking, so bizarre that no-one has any idea what it might be."

     "Something like this perhaps," said Saturn, reaching into a pouch and producing an artifact from Fechlon. It was a cigarette lighter, although neither Saturn nor any of the others knew that. To them it was a pure mystery, its lighter fluid long since dried up. The electric charge of the ignition circuit long since drained away.

     Galia stared at it, her eyes wide with amazement. "Where did you get that?" she asked.

     "That's not important," said Saturn impatiently. "Have you ever seen anything like this? Maybe not exactly the same but the same class of object. Probably almost disintegrated with age. Come on Girl! Answer me!"

     "Well, one or two things have been found. Not precisely like that, but..."

     "Where are they?" demanded the wizard. "We must see them!"

     "They're in a storeroom, along with all the other objects that aren't put on display, but I need special permission to let you see them..."

     "No you don't," insisted Saturn, however. "The Archchancellor assigned you to see to all our needs, so see to them. Take us to your storeroom. Quickly, girl!"

     Galia backed away in fear, but then nodded and led them to a door bearing the stern warning 'Staff only'. On the other side was a corridor leading past several doors bearing labels like "Derronian era" and "Post Iconoclastic dark age". Galia led them to another door right at the end bearing the label "Miscellaneous and unknown". Inside were rows of shelves bearing stacks of dusty boxes. Braddle peeked a look inside one of them as the girl began moving them aside to reach another further back.

     "This is a sholog milk churn," he said in surprise. "I've only ever seen one other, and that was in pretty poor condition. This is beautiful!"

     "Sholog milk?" said Edward in disgust. "You're kidding!"

     "Not sholog milk," replied the nome with a smile of amusement. "Cow, or perhaps goat milk, but churned into butter by a sholog farmer."

     "There's no such things as sholog farmers," declared Edward firmly. "They're thieves and monsters..."

     "They used to be farmers once," said Braddle. "They ploughed fields, planted crops, built cities... There was a time when they could almost be considered a civilised race, before they degenerated and became what they are today."

     "There's even a school of thought that humans and shologs share a common ancestry, along with all the other humanoid races," continued the nome. "If it's true, even you and I share a common ancestor, if you look far enough back." Edward looked doubtful, however, and the nome chuckled under his breath, moving on to peek into some of the other boxes.

     "Here we are," said Galia, pulling a box forward from right at the back. She carried it to a table and opened the lid, removing balls of crumpled paper that had been protecting the contents. Saturn strode over and pulled the box to his side of the table, ignoring the girl's cry of protest. "They're very delicate!" she warned, but the wizard was already reaching in to remove the first object.

     It looked like nothing they'd seen before, either on Veglia or Fechlon, but there was something about the style of the object, the construction, that caused the elderly wizard's eyes to widen with familiarity. It was made of some kind of metal, comprising several pieces that fitted closely together with only narrow gaps between in which traces of rock or soil remained. Symbols had been engraved in one face, defying even a translation spell to make sense of them, and a round hole in the opposite face had clearly been meant for something long and thin to be inserted. It was completely mysterious, but clearly of sophisticated manufacture. The product of an advanced culture.

     "Has it been dated?" he asked.

     "I don't know," the girl replied. "If it has been, the record's been lost. Do you know what it is? Who made it?"

     Saturn ignored the questions and handed the object to Braddle. "What do you make of it?" he asked.

     The nome turned it over in his hands, examining it from every angle. Then he muttered the words of a spell. "As I expected, the paramorphic traces have faded," he said, "but I might be able to tell its age. It'll take a couple of minutes."

     "Get started," said Saturn, returning his attention to the box. The next couple of objects he removed were little more than shapeless lumps of rust, one of which had snapped in two to reveal the merest trace of blue in the centre where a residue of the original metal remained. He placed them on the table and forgot about them.

     The next object was a belt buckle, but larger than would be required for any item of human clothing. A giant's belt buckle, perhaps. Saturn set it aside as well, not seeing the look of astonishment that had appeared on Thomas's face. It was a gemsteed's saddle buckle, and picking it up he saw the name engraved on the inside, where it would have been hidden by the steed's scaly hide. Morgrim, he read, and incredibly it was a name he recognised. The Captain of Lord Ruby's flight. A man who'd served the Gem Lords faithfully for many years before falling in battle with the Guthmen. He was actually holding a piece of Tak's life in his hands!

     Galia was still watching Saturn with worried, anxious eyes, so Thomas took the opportunity to slip the buckle into a pouch. Feeling a little guilty, he slipped a silver coin on a nearby shelf where it would be found later, after they'd left. Ten times what the buckle had been worth in Tak's day and a fair price for an artifact of so little interest to the museum's curators that it might have sat, unknown and forgotten, in that box for centuries. All of a sudden, Thomas had lost all interest in the sixteen thousand year old civilisation. All he wanted was to go home and shut himself up in his dwelling tree so he could take the buckle out and examine it properly. He had no doubt that it would bring the memories flooding back like nothing else.

     Saturn, meanwhile, had found another object that interested him. A bracelet of some kind, by the look of it, composed of overlapping metal links and bearing a round metal object an inch across with a glass face. Like the first object, it was crusted with hard, finely grained soil that had worked its way deep into every crack and crevice. The archaeologist who'd discovered it had, wisely, made no attempt to clean it, in case more damage was caused, wanting to preserve delicate details that might, one day, reveal clues as to what it was and who'd made it. Like the first object this one had lettering engraved on the back, but this time it bore a resemblance to old Garonian and when Saturn cast a translation spell on it he was delighted to find that he could read it. "'To Garyl from Willow, with love.'"

     "A gift," he said, his single eye glowing with excitement. "A token of love. A birthday gift, perhaps. This wasn't just a bracelet, though, unless I'm very much mistaken. This did something. It performed some function."

     "Like a magical artifact?" said Edward. "Do you sense any magic on it?"

     "Not magic," said Saturn. He noticed some buttons on the side and tried pressing them but nothing happened. He handed it to Braddle Bandock. "Any luck?" he asked.

     The nome was still working on the first artifact, sprinkling it with some kind of silvery powder and arranging a circle of tiny gemstones around it where it lay on the table. "In a minute," he said. "Just need a couple of moments more..." He studied the circle of gemstones carefully, moved one of them the tiniest fraction of an inch. "You understand that this isn't a particularly accurate spell. I'll only be able to date it to within a few thousand years. If you want greater accuracy I'll have to take it back to my laboratory."

     "Just do what you can," said Saturn impatiently.

     "Please don't damage it," begged Galia anxiously. "It's a valuable historical artifact, priceless. I'll get in trouble if you damage it."

     "No harm will come to it, I promise you," assured the nome as he moved another gemstone a tiny amount, satisfying himself that the circle was as perfect as he could make it. "Everyone please stand back and cover your eyes."

     He passed a chubby hand over the artifact and spoke a magic word. The silvery powder flared into brilliant life and rose, forming delicate traceries of patterns in the air above the artifact. Thomas made the mistake of looking and had to look away quickly. It was like looking at the yellow sun! Braddle forced himself to look into the dazzling brightness, however, staring for several moments until it began to fade and the powder evaporated into the air. He cursed under his breath and rubbed his eyes. "Can't see a drassed thing," he mumbled. "One of these days I'm going to really, seriously damage my eyesight."

     Saturn didn't care about his eyesight, though. He'd made sacrifices himself, including one of his own eyes, and clearly regarded the nome's discomfort as trivial in comparison. "Well?" he demanded. "What did you learn?"

     Braddle looked around the room, trying to see past the huge purple after image that blocked most of his view. "It is between fifteen and twenty thousand years old..." he began.

     He was interrupted by Galia's cry of protest. "That's not possible!" she stated flatly. "Nothing else of that age has ever been found..."

     "I think it has," said Saturn, however, showing her the bracelet. "As soon as you can," he told Braddle, "I want you to date this as well."

     "It usually takes half an hour for my eyes to recover," said the nome, still blinking uncomfortably. "I'll be with you as soon as I can." He went off to find a dark corner to rest his eyes.

     Saturn resumed his search of the box but found nothing else of interest. "What else have you got?" he asked the young woman.

     "Nothing else like that," replied Galia. "I catalogue this collection. I handle everything in the building from time to time and if there were anything else like that, I'd know it."

     Saturn studied her closely, then nodded. "Very well. To be honest, we've already found more than I'd hoped, I thought we'd have to go digging ourselves. Where were these objects found?"

     "Inside the horseshoe dike," said the girl, moving to another table which had a drawer under it. She removed a map of the city and the surrounding countryside and spread it out. "Here," she said, indicating a structure that did indeed resemble a horseshoe, about five miles across with its open end facing the sea, which was about twenty miles away. It was approximately ten miles north east of the city of Gromm.

     "This structure is older than any known human settlement and is thought to be the work of an unknown prehuman civilisation. The coast would have been higher back then so that it closed the circle made by the dike, enclosing the coastal settlement. The sage Turlough dug extensively back in the reign of the Emperor Sar-Ronin, but found no trace of any buildings. No structures of any kind. Not even the remains of foundations. All he found were the contents of this box."

     She'd lapsed easily back into a teacher's lecturing tone and Thomas decided she probably led tours round the museum, describing the objects and their histories to the avid visitors.

     "It was decided that they'd been left comparatively recently by nomadic humans," added Galia. "Stopping briefly and taking advantage of the dike for protection."

     "That is undoubtedly the explanation for most of these objects," agreed Saturn, "But these two objects were made by the same people who raised the dike, I'm convinced of it. Humans, living sixteen thousand years ago. A previously unsuspected civilisation." He looked at Thomas and nodded to him, acknowledging that it had been his theory. The younger wizard smiled with pleasure.

     "I've never heard anyone else suggest an idea like that," said Galia, puzzled. "Have you found other similar artifacts elsewhere?"

     "We have our reasons for believing what we do," was all Saturn would say, however. He then confined himself to wandering around the museum, examining the other exhibits, until Braddle was ready to cast the spell again.

     "Fourteen to eighteen thousand years old," he said a few minutes later, rubbing his badly abused eyes again. "The date ranges of both objects overlap the sixteen thousand year period, as do the other objects you brought back, but that still doesn't prove they're contemporary with each other. They could belong to totally different cultures thousands of years separated, all destroyed by different, unrelated events. The evidence for your ancient catastrophe theory is very weak, I'm afraid. You won't convince anyone without more than this."

     "Other objects?" asked Galia, trembling with curiosity. "Ancient catastrophe? What's this all about?"

     "Thank you," said Saturn, however. "You've been most helpful." He began placing the artifacts in one of his pouches.

     "Hey, you can't do that!" protested the girl, however. "They're property of the museum! They stay here!"

     Saturn reached into another pouch and produced a handful of gold coins. He grabbed her hand and placed the coins in her palm, closing her fingers over them. "We're done here," he told the other wizards. "Let's go."

     Galia stared in open mouthed astonishment as the five strangers filed out of the room, the four youngest of them looking back and smiling apologetically. Then she stared at the coins in her hand, gasping in astonishment at more money than she'd ever seen before in her life. Thomas, pausing in the doorway, saw a smile appear on her face. He smiled in turn as he followed Saturn back to the stairs.