Drenn's warning upset and unnerved them enough that Thomas found himself lying awake well into the small hours of the morning worrying about it. He'd tried so hard to win the trust of the people of Shonnla. He'd fooled himself into thinking he was making some progress with them, but the more he thought about it the more he realised that the priest was right. Every word spoken by the Mayor and his other 'guests' was suddenly revealed in a new light, and he now guessed that every one of them was, in fact, trained in prisoner interrogation. They hadn't said a thing that hadn't been, obviously or subtly, a dig for information, while their own questions had been deftly diverted or answered only obliquely.

     Thomas realised that he knew nothing about Malgania except its approximate size and level of technology, and even those things he'd assessed for himself in the previous days from observing the citizens going about their business. He knew nothing about the size of its army, whether it even had a navy, how well its cities were equipped to resist an invasion... They were being treated as spies, he realised in sudden revelation. They suspected they'd been deliberately planted here, with the aim of gathering information, and spies were always executed, in every society he'd ever heard of.

     Drenn's right, he realised. They are going to kill us. We have to get out of here as fast as possible. Even waiting a single day might be waiting too long. Escaping would mean using his spells, though, and for that he'd need a clear head. He had to get some sleep. He was so unnerved by their newly discovered danger, though, that he had to use all the meditation techniques he'd learned in the University before he could finally drift away.

☆☆☆

     The next morning he rose early and slipped quietly into Drenn's room, where he found the priest already about his morning exercises, his taut, muscular body slick with sweat. "Finding the weapons we came with might be difficult," he said. "Any old swords would be good enough, wouldn't they? They seem to have pretty good quality weapons."

     "I would very much like to get my throwing knives back," the priest replied. "They have a certain sentimental attachment for me." Then he sighed, though. "Good enough," he said. "So long as we've got something to fight with." Thomas nodded gratefully and left.

     The obvious place to look for weapons was the guardhouse, and Thomas meandered his way in that direction in the pretext of exploring the city. It wasn't the first time he'd done so, but now for the first time he looked behind himself from time to time, looking for people following him. In the busy, crowded streets it wasn't possible to tell for sure, but on one occasion he thought he saw someone ducking back out of sight as he looked around. He toyed with the idea of ducking into an alleyway to catch his tail as he passed by, but it would only tip them off that he was on to them. He refrained from looking behind himself any more, therefore, even though the back of his head itched as if he could feel crossbows aimed at him.

     Only when he saw the guardhouse ahead of him did he slip into a doorway long enough to mutter a spell. Then he sprang back out into the street before someone using the door bumped into him. Sure enough, no-one reacted to his presence and he had to dodge out of the way of people heading straight for him. He was invisible. He paused for a moment on an impulse, and was rewarded by the sight of an averagely dressed townsman searching around in confusion, looking for the Tharian he'd been following. Thomas chuckled under his breath, then ducked between the guards on door duty and into the guardhouse.

     He had to be quick. His tail might guess that this was his objective and raise the alarm. He dashed down corridors and up and down stairs, therefore, pressing himself flat against the wall whenever he came upon someone passing in the other direction, and eventually he discovered a sturdy, locked door with a word he didn't know painted on the heavy, closely grained wood. He guessed the word was 'Armoury'. He looked up and down the corridor to make sure he was alone, then cast another spell.

     The lock sprang undone with a click and the door swung open. Thomas ducked in and pushed the door closed behind him, wedging it with a piece of oiled cloth he found on the floor. He'd been right, he found to his delight. It was indeed the weapons store, and the walls were covered with iron hooks bearing swords, crossbows, spears and lances, along with other pieces of murderous ironware unfamiliar to him.

     What immediately caught his attention, though, and brought a gasp of delight from his open mouth, were the Tharian weapons, including Drenn's coat of knives, piled on top of an ironbound chest and discarded, as if of no interest to the Shonnlans.

     So long as the invisibility spell lasted, anything he carried was invisible as well and so no alarm was raised as he crept silently back the way he'd come. As he was approaching the entrance, though, he passed an open door beyond which was an office, containing a table on which was spread something that caught his eye and jerked him to a stop. A map! Their hosts had shown them maps during their days as 'guests', but they were very basic things that showed almost nothing of interest. Little more than coastlines and cities. This one was a lot more detailed, however, and as he crept in to get a better look he spotted more maps rolled up in a chest beside the table.

     His heart pounding with excitement, Thomas hesitated only a moment to make sure there was no-one nearby, as folding paper would make a considerable amount of noise, and then he lowered the weapons gently to the floor. He grabbed up the maps, stuffed them inside his jacket and picked up the weapons again, wincing with alarm as two of the swords clanged against each other. He froze as he waited to see if anyone had heard and then, creeping painfully slowly to stop the paper rustling, he crept down the last corridor back to the building's entrance, past the door keepers and back out into the street.

     The man who'd been tailing him was still there, staring at passers by in some agitation, and Thomas felt his heart go out to him, imagining the punishment he'd be likely to suffer when the thefts were discovered. Then he put him out of his mind, though, and hurried back to their rooms, where the others were waiting. Ion and Cresselda were there, talking with Roj Villa and Jop Sonno, or more likely keeping an eye on them and listening intently to every word they spoke, alert for any clue to Belthar's capabilities and intentions.

     Thomas slipped quietly past them, back to the common room where Drenn and Matthew were waiting. There, he allowed the invisibility spell to lapse, and the Flight Leader gave a cry of delight to see his sword. "You found it!" he cried, lifting it lovingly. "I hadn't realised how naked I felt without it!"

     "Get the others in," said Drenn as he examined his throwing knives with satisfaction. At that moment, though, a commotion sounded from the doorway below and they heard men striding in and climbing the stairs. They heard the clanking of armour and weapons that told them they were soldiers. Thomas's tail must have reported his disappearance and the alarm had been raised.

     Thomas ran for the door. "Roj! Jop! In here, quick!"

     The two Beltharans stared, then ran in while the women stared in alarm. Thomas slammed the door shut and pushed a chair against it just as the soldiers reached the top of the stairs and came running.

     "Gather up your weapons," ordered Thomas. "Quick!"

     The soldiers did so, and then they formed a circle, holding hands. Thomas just had time to speak the magic words before the door crashed open and the soldiers rushed in, to find the room empty except for a tingle of magical energy that hung in the air for a few moments before dissipating, leaving no sign that the Beltharans had ever been there.

☆☆☆

     They reappeared in the building, twenty miles away, that they'd been smoked out of by the Malganian officer. The building that Thomas had half demolished with Fist of the Father during their first escape. The first thing they did was freeze in place, listening intently for any sound being made by enemy soldiers in the vicinity, and then they carefully searched from room to room, only allowing themselves to relax when they'd confirmed that they were alone in the building. Thomas sagged in relief, sitting carefully on the bare stone floor, and remained like that for several moments to let his heart rate return to normal. Then he removed the crumpled maps from his jacket and spread them out on the floor to look at them.

     "What've you got there?" asked Matthew, sitting beside him. "Hey! That's great!"

     "Found these in the guardhouse," said the wizard, grinning with delight. "This is Shonnla, right? The city we just left."

     "Right," agreed Drenn as the others gathered round. He nodded in satisfaction at the detail shown on the maps. Border outposts were shown, where Malgania bordered the territory of the Southerners, and the current territories of the feather people were also shown, drawn softly in pencil so that it could be updated as the nomadic people moved around.

     "But where are we now?" asked Roj Villa, his eyes scanning the thick parchment. The detail was such that individual skyscrapers were shown, but most of them were alike. There was no way of telling one from another.

     "We'll just have to wander around until we come across a landmark shown on the map," said Matthew, frowning unhappily. "Dangerous, I know, but what else can we..."

     "No! Look!" cried the infantryman, however, pointing excitedly at a point on the map closest to him.

     They all looked, and Thomas laughed out loud at the penciled writing, written alongside a building that had been ringed three times. 'Second battle with spies,' the words said. 'Caves damaged, cause unknown.'

     "Well, that's where we are," he said, "and I reckon we ought to get out of here as quick as possible. This building's known to them. They may come here looking for us."

     "They knew who we were all along," said Matthew in amazement. "They knew we'd fought their soldiers! We didn't fool them for one moment!"

     "Doesn't matter," said Drenn, "but the wizard's right. We need to go. Right now. I suggest we go in that direction." He indicated a direction on the map away from Malganian cities and military outposts.

     "Okay," agreed Matthew. "Let's go."

     They gathered everything up, descended to the ground floor and slipped out into the undergrowth choking the ancient streets, heading in the direction of the rising sun.

     They moved slowly and carefully, the soldiers using all their training to avoid leaving a trail that could be followed, so that they'd only travelled a couple of miles before stopping in another skyscraper to rest and make some longer range plans. Worrying about being seen through the windows, they made their way to the centre of the building, where they came across a stone staircase leading to the basement levels. They descended cautiously, and froze when they heard faint sounds coming from further ahead, but it turned out to be a nest of mole badgers which disappeared through a dozen burrows in the walls and floor, barking in indignation, as the Tharians entered.

     "The stone looks different here," observed Matthew when Thomas had cast a Light spell to push back the darkness. "Bluer. Somehow more... More alive looking." He glanced in embarrassment at the others, unhappy by his choice of words but unable to think of anything else that covered what he felt."

     Thomas was nodding, though, and he jabbed at the stone with the point of his knife. "Doesn't even mark it," he muttered. "Not even the slightest chip." On an impulse he went back upstairs and came back with a broken off sample of ground level building stone. It reacted to his knife just like ordinary stone, lacking the almost supernatural hardness of the basement stone, and yet it was clear from the way it had been worked and shaped that they'd originally been the same.

     "The people who built this city had a way of hardening stone, so it would survive the centuries," he speculated, "but the treatment, whatever it was, has worn off over the ages. It's only remained unchanged down here, where it's been protected from the elements. That would explain how the skyscrapers have lasted this long."

     "But if they're reverting to ordinary stone, they won't last much longer," added Matthew. "Only three hundred years have passed since the fall of Agglemon, but most of their cities have vanished. I bet if you were to come back here five hundred years from now, all these skyscrapers will have gone."

     The others nodded thoughtfully, marveling that, by the immense timescale of these relics of a bygone civilisation, they'd arrived just in time to see the last of them.

     Thomas spread his maps out on the floor again, glad that he now had the time to have a proper look at them. He reflected that they came in two different kinds. Some of them attempted to depict every individual stream and skyscraper while others only showed important landmarks. The only buildings they showed, for instance, were those that were sufficiently different to stand out visibly from a distance, including some that seemed to be the size of entire Tharian cities, and the only rivers they showed were those wide and deep enough to form a barrier to progress.

     One such map had a group of buildings marked near the coast, for instance, that resembled a cluster of warehouses. Low, squat, buildings that must once have served an important function to occupy so much valuable land, while nearby was a bridge that spanned a channel of water over fifty miles wide. He found himself wondering whether it was possible that these structures really were that size, but then he remembered the ring arcing overhead. A tribute to the engineering prowess of its creators that was visible across the entire planet.

     Then he gasped in astonishment as his eyes fell on a comparatively small detail marked near the corner. The paper was damaged and torn there, making it difficult to tell whether he was indeed seeing what he thought he was, and he searched through the other maps looking for the one that overlapped it. A map that would have that structure marked safely away from the edge.

     "Matt," he said when he found it. "Matt! Have a look at this!"

     "What is it?" asked the soldier, and the others gathered round as well, wondering what he'd found. The map showed a cluster of elongated ovals standing in an open field. Pointed spindles with fat middles. Without a consistent scale, it was impossible to tell how large these structures were. They might have been miles across or just a few yards long, but they looked an awful lot like the Bescot. The felisian silver ship. Could it be a landing field for Masters' ships?

     "How far away is that?" asked Drenn, his steel grey eyes widening with excitement.

     "Difficult to say," replied the wizard. "A few days journey perhaps."

     "If Saturn and the felisians are still alive," said Matthew, "and if they also hear about that place..."

     "They'll head there!" exclaimed Thomas excitedly. "If there's even a chance that any of those ships are recent arrivals, which the felisians can fix up and sail off in..."

     "They might be there now," agreed Jop Sonno, caught up in the excitement. "Waiting for us."

     "If they landed in this part of the planet," said Drenn, though. "Teleporting blind as we did, they may have landed anywhere on the planet. Thousands of miles away perhaps."

     "Maybe," Thomas agreed, "but we landed here for a reason. I don't know what the reason was, but Saturn and his group may have landed nearby for the same reason. I think there's a good chance they're in this part of the world. Even if they're not, though, we have to go somewhere, and that's as good a destination as anywhere else."

     "Then it's decided," said Matthew in satisfaction. "We're headed for the landing field."

     The Tharians grinned delightedly at each other, as if they were already as good as on the way home.