Part One

Dreams.

Theesa never thought much of dreams.

Her mother and grandmother had prophetic visions through theirs, but Theesa's nights had never been anything but mundane... with the occasional nightmare thrown in for variety. HER visions came while she was awake. Any time she touched and object and loosened her mind in just the right way, she could read the object's past. Sometimes that was a good thing. Sometimes it wasn't. It all depended on what she saw. What secrets she uncovered... and how badly someone else wanted those secrets kept.

Secrets.

Secrets sometimes made for very interesting dreams...

The sky was purple, with streaks of blood that flowed like rivers above her head. There were constant flashes of light... not from the sky, but from the horizon. Streams of lightning arced past her... she turned to see where they were going, but all she saw was a bright darkness crawling toward her from the opposite horizon. The ground shook... and then she realized that she wasn't alone.

Screaming. Everywhere... men and women... children. Things that weren't remotely human... but yet were human enough to scream as the streams of multicolored light tore them apart.

Then someone was shouting. A voice like thunder... behind her... in front of her... all around... Above? The voice shouted words that Theesa couldn't comprehend.

No... no, she could understand the words. She knew what they were... but they still didn't make sense... as if her mind was refusing to give them their meaning. She wasn't SUPPOSED to know what they meant. Yet.

A flood of bodies... very few of them human... rushed past her, throwing themselves into the multicolored light. Theesa didn't join the screaming horde. She couldn't... because she wasn't really there. It was a dream.... but not like any other she'd had before. It was almost like the prophetic ones that her mother described... but yet, the FEELING was wrong.

This didn't feel like the future. It felt familiar... like a memory...

A memory of things that had already happened.... but not YET...

...a vision of the past... from the future? How...?

Whatever it was, Theesa didn't like it...

...so she woke up.

Theesa opened her eyes. Paul lay next to her in the bed... snoring loudly despite her tossing and turning. She threw her arm around his wide chest and snuggled close to him... wallowing in his body heat.

And then she realized that the screaming hadn't stopped.

She shook Paul until his snoring ended.

"...huh? Wha-"

"The baby!" Theesa whispered urgently into his ear. "Don't you hear!?"

"...yeah...," Paul mumbled. He was still half-asleep. "Yeah... maybe he's hungry... is it time to feed-"

"Paul, we don't HAVE a baby!"

---

The newborn lay just inside their front door. There was no blanket or basket... the naked child lay on his back on the cold bare floor... a cruelty that shocked Theesa almost as much as the intrusion into their home shocked Paul. Paul reacted true to his nature... he walked right past the baby to the closet, where he grabbed his crossbow and began a thorough search of the house. He checked every door and window, and found them as securely locked as they'd been when they'd gone to sleep. He checked them again... then lit a torch and went outside to search for footprints.

Meanwhile, Theesa did her best to calm the abandoned baby. She wrapped him in a blanket and held him. He was a pink little thing... a tiny bundle of warmth.

"Shhhhh...." she whispered as she rocked the newborn in her arms. "It's okay... shhhh..."

The boy appeared healthy. He had the correct number of fingers and toes, and he CERTAINLY had a functioning pair of lungs. He squirmed healthily as Theesa held him, but he quickly grew accustomed to her and lay still. He looked up at Theesa with tiny gray eyes... then drifted off to sleep.

SLAM!

Paul slammed the door when he came back inside-

"wwWWWAAAAAA-AAAA-AAAA!!!"

-Causing the child once again assault the morning silence with a display of healthy lung-power.

"Paul!" Theesa snapped, frantically trying to calm the infant again.

"Sorry, I-" Paul looked at them.... Theesa and the baby in her arms... and for a moment he had the strangest expression on his face.

"What?" said Theesa.

"N-nothing," he replied, still smiling. Paul had a nice smile, when he used it. But he seemed to use it less and less as he got older. They'd been married for only 11 years, but Paul hadn't been a young man when they'd met. Theesa hadn't been all that young herself, but the few drops of elf in her bloodline helped keep the years off of her. Not so, for Paul. He wasn't as strong or muscular as he'd once been... and his beard was beginning to show hints of gray... hints that Paul vehemently denied despite the evidence in the mirror. Years of toil and worry had left their mark on his face in the form of hairline wrinkles and a certain weariness under his eyes.

Still, for the briefest moment, right after he'd come through the door, Paul looked like a giddy schoolchild with a new toy. That instant faded rather quickly, however.

"There's nothing out there," he said. "Doors locked. Windows locked. No prints that I could find. It'll be morning soon though, I'll check again-"

"I think we've got bigger questions than 'how,'" Theesa replied. "Like: 'who' and 'why'? Paul, who's child is this?"

"Does it-"

"HE, Paul. It's a HE, not an 'it'."

"Does HE look like anyone we know?"

"No one. But he's got the most interesting eyes... see?"

Paul looked over Theesa's shoulder.

"Gray. Crowley Thurgood has gray eyes."

"Crowley Thurgood is also 87 years old."

"You've never had to pull ole Crowley out of the saloon at closing time. Being 87 years old means absolutely nothing."

"He doesn't look like Crowley. His eyes aren't this shade... I don't think I've ever seen anything quite this color before. Oh, Paul, why would someone abandon a child like this? A baby!"

"And why would they abandon it HERE? Maybe this is some kind of joke. Everyone knows that we can't have-"

"No one would play a joke like this with a child, Paul. No one in this town. Nobody here could be so cruel..."

"You never know..." Paul had that focused, concentrated look in his eyes. Theesa knew he was going down a mental list of everyone in the town... no, everyone he had ever known... and judging if they were capable of abandoning a child at his door. Judging his friends as if he'd just met them yesterday. Theesa hated when he did that, but its what made him good at his job. At his FORMER job. "Maybe someone passing through. A traveler-"

"In the middle of the night?"

"Its almost morning. Someone's getting off to an early start, and they decided to drop off some unwanted baggage before they got on their way."

"Unwanted baggage," Theesa repeated with disgust. She hugged the child, bouncing it slightly. "He's so beautiful..."

"Can I hold him?"

Theesa turned to look at her husband... not sure if she should laugh or be afraid.

"Paul LeMay, you've never held a baby in your life."

"Sure I have. I have cousins... and a younger brother. Lemme hold him."

"If you drop this baby-" she warned as she placed the child in Paul's outstretched arms. At first Paul held the baby at arms length like a bundle of spider-infested cordwood... which earned him Theesa's 'stare of disapproval' But he adjusted his grasp and held the baby to his chest...

...the baby started crying instantly.

"He doesn't like me," said Paul.

"Children are like that," said Theesa.

Paul dug through the blanket and examined the baby's arms and legs.

"No marks, no scars," said Paul. "Nothing to identify-"

"Paul," Theesa said sternly. "Stop treating the baby as evidence."

"The child came from SOMEWHERE, dear... and the only thing he brought with him is himself. He IS evidence. Now calm down and let me do my job."

"Your job?"

"Oh..." Paul looked up. "Uhhh... well, you know..."

"You're not a member of the guard any more, Paul."

"No, but I own this property... and someone came INSIDE my house and left this baby here. I'd like to find out who. Maybe you could-"

"No," said Theesa. "You know it doesn't work that way."

"Try?"

"I can't get impressions off of living things, Paul... you know that."

"Try anyway? Please?"

"Paul..."

"You know how I am. You know this is going to eat at me until I've gotten to the bottom of it."

"Fine..." Theesa sighed. She took the child back and held him... she stroked his face with her fingertips... which he promptly tried to bite. Fortunately he didn't any teeth yet. "Come on now..." Theesa whispered as she closed her eyes. "...tell me where you've been..."

Her fingers began to tingle. An odd sensation began to nag the right side of her head. It wasn't pain, but it didn't feel all that GOOD either. The sensation became a familiar knot of discomfort that she felt every time she tried to read something living. Her grandmother had told her that the auras of living things interfered with the static patterns of the past. Theesa didn't know exactly HOW her ability worked...or didn't... but her grandmother's explanation was as good as any she'd heard since.

"Nothing," said Theesa.

"Nothing? Not a flash... an image... a sound...?"

"Nothing. Happy now?"

"I've exhausted one avenue of investigation... so, yes."

The baby started to cry again.

"I think he's hungry," said Theesa. "But we don't have anything to feed a baby..."

"You don't feed them food?" said Paul.

"Ummm... no," said Theesa, stifling a laugh.

"What?"

"You're cute, Paul. Go to the neighbors house and borrow some milk."

"The neighbors," said Paul. "You know what's going to happen the instant I go over there, don't you?"

"Yes...," Theesa said. "Just go."

"Oookay. You asked for it-"

---

Twenty minutes later, the house was a circus. Every living thing for three houses in each direction had managed to squeeze into Theesa's house, determined to see the baby that had mysteriously dropped from heaven. Naturally, the baby didn't particularly care for that much company this early in the morning... and neither did Theesa. She knew all of these people. She knew the secrets they kept... and they knew she knew. She ALSO knew that some of them thought she should be burned at the stake for witchcraft, just because of the silly things THEY did... things that they didn't want anyone to know about.

And they were all in her house.

This was turning out to be a very bad morning.

Paul, of course, just loved it. All the prime suspects were gathered in one room.... he couldn't ask for anything better.

He was his in full investigation-mode... alternating between prying information out of the neighbors with carefully orchestrated small-talk, and leaning against the wall watching them like a vulture waiting for a dying man to drop.

No one knew who the child was. No one knew who he looked like. No one had seen any strangers in town.

Unless, of course, someone was lying.

Sometime just after dawn, when the crowd had reached it peak, Paul suggested that Theesa surreptitiously scan some of the visitor's clothing to be sure they weren't involved. Not everyone... just a certain few. Theesa vehemently refused... without admitting that she'd already done it. She had her principles about peeking into other people's pasts, but there WAS a child involved, and someone HAD been in their house without permission. Bending her own rules was probably justified in this instance.

She found nothing.

A few people had had some rather interesting nights... but nothing connected with the baby.

Just after dawn, people began wandering away... wives to their homes, and husbands off to their places of employment. Paul SHOULD have been among them, but he stayed as the crowd thinned.

"No one knows who this baby belongs to," said Theesa. "Paul, what if we never find out who's it is?"

"We'll find out."

"But what if we don't?" Theesa didn't say what she was thinking. She didn't have to.

"The, I guess-"

"CONGRATULATIONS!" came a shout from the doorway. It was Jacob... a young, lively, and very LOUD member of the town guard. He was also Paul's best friend,... and Theesa's too.

The baby, however, didn't care for him.

"wwwWWAAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAA!"

Theesa just shook her head.

"Oops, sorry," said Jacob. He came in and have Theesa a hearty hug.

"Easy with my wife there, Jacob," said Paul. "She's just had a baby."

"So I hear! And here I thought she was just gaining a few pounds-"

"Oh, thank you," Theesa said with a fake frown. "Thank you very much for that."

"So... can I see the little man?"

"Just follow the screaming." Theesa and Paul had made a makeshift crib out of an old basket and a few blankets. The baby lay nestled in the folds of cloth like a jewel in a velvet case.

When Jacob leaned over to see the child, the baby urinated on his chestplate.

"Yikes! I've been doused!" said Jacob.

"I'm sorry, I'll get a rag or something..."

"Thanks. So, Paul... any idea who's it is?"

"None. Whoever it was snuck in here and dropped him off without waking anyone up."

"Rather unsettling-"

"And illegal," said Paul.

"Here, I'll get it..." Theesa started cleaning off Jacob's armor. He was on his way to work, which meant he wore the same metal-reinforced leather plate that Paul used to wear. Theesa always thought it was an ugly contraption, but the men considered it very stylish. It had the emblem of the town guard stamped over the heart. Paul said the armor was comfortable and it didn't impede their movements when they fought. Theesa took his word for it... to her, it looked about as comfortable and unimpeding as walking around with a cow strapped to your back. "There," she said as she finished wiping the armor dry... cleaning it as she used to clean Paul's years ago. "All polished up."

"Why thank you, milady. And what shall we do now?"

"Excuse me?"

"The baby?"

"OH! Well... there's the midwife," said Theesa. "I could take him to Yestra and see if SHE recognizes him."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," said Jacob. "She's delivered every baby in this town for years. If he was born here, she'd know."

"And if he wasn't born here... I think Gresham might be able to help."

"Gresham?" Jacob and Theesa said at once.

"There may be magic involved," said Paul.

"You're right..." Jacob mused. Theesa could tell that Jacob didn't have the slightest idea how magic might have been involved. He was just going along with his former mentor, like he always did. The young man looked up to Paul like the father he never had. "Ummm... yeah, we'll go to Gresham after we see Yestra."

"We?" said Theesa.

"Well... an abandoned baby IS a matter for the law," said Jacob. "And in case you hadn't noticed," Jacob tapped the emblem on his chest. "That's me."

"Glad to have you along," said Paul. "I guess we'll make a day of it, then-"

"We?" Theesa said again.

"Yes, I'm going with you."

"Hmmmm..." Theesa ran her hand across Paul's chest... "I don't see a town-guard emblem on this shirt."

"Theesa, someone left a BABY in my house!"

"OUR house. I'm just as capable of representing this household as you. The only difference is that I don't have a store to run. You do."

"The store can be closed for one day-"

"Or it can be open. It won't make any difference to this baby... but it will make a difference to your customers."

"But-"

"Paul... I know you. You get involved in this any more than you already are, and the next thing I know you'll be turning in your tools for a sword and a new suit of armor. And you KNOW how I feel about-"

"Okay! Okay! You and Jacob go, I'll be at work. Come see me at lunch and let me know what you've found."

"I think that was a good choice, friend." Jacob winked at Paul, then whispered. "You know how she gets."

"I heard that!"

"Take care of my wife, Jacob," said Paul, lowering his voice.

"We're just going across town-"

"I know. I've just got a bad feeling about this."

"How bad?"

"I don't know yet. Someone abandoned that baby... maybe because they didn't want it, or maybe because someone else DID want it. Someone who might come looking for it. You get my meaning?"

"That thought had crossed my mind, too."

"Just keep an eye out, okay. I'll be asking around at some of the other shops. You keep my wife safe."

"Don't worry Paul... she's with the second-best guardsman that ever walked the streets of this town. Nothing's gonna happen... I swear. Let's go, Theesa!"

"I'm ready." Theesa had the baby wrapped in yet another blanket. She pretended that she hadn't heard the conversation between Jacob and Paul, even though excellent hearing was yet another gift of her elven heritage. She gave Paul a kiss and preceded Jacob out the door into the morning air.

---

Jacob Marshall was barely in his teens when Paul killed his father. Seston Marshall was a small-time rogue who figured he'd make it big with a few kidnappings. He was also a drunk who, when he was finally caught, figured that he was more of a swordsman than he really was. The town guard found him. He resisted. He died. Paul told the story just that simply, with no embellishment or detail. It wasn't worthy of any, according to Paul... but that wasn't the end of the tale. Seston's son was destined to follow in his father's footsteps unless there was a strong hand to guide him toward the proper way. He was too old to adopt, yet too young and impulsive to run the streets alone. He needed a few more years of parenting to set him straight. Paul and Theesa took the boy in as more of a unpaying border than a son... even though Paul was much more of a father than Seston Marshall ever was. Paul pulled some strings to get the boy some employment and eventually a house of his own. Jacob became a handsome young man who was as almost good with a sword as Paul, and he joined the town guard just a few years before Paul retired. The two were inseparable friends, and remained so even after Paul decided to make his living with carpentry instead of swordplay. In fact, it seemed that since Paul's retirement, Jacob was around more often than he'd ever been before. Perhaps he was still picking up lessons from his mentor... or maybe his missed Paul's company. Or maybe it was something else.

Whatever it was, Theesa was happy to have him along. By the time they reached the end of the street, Theesa and Jacob had drawn yet another crowd. The whole town had heard of the mysterious child, and it seemed like everyone with two legs and a minute to spare had come out to see him. Jacob let them oooh and ahhhh over the infant for a few minutes, then dispatched them with an official-sounding declaration of "We're On An Official Investigation, Please Back Away"... or something similar. They went the rest of the way to midwife's home without incident.

Yestra had been the town's midwife, healer, and rumor-monger for longer than most of its current residents had been alive. In fact, she'd delivered most of the population herself. She looked and sounded every bit her age, but she was still strong enough to tend her own garden, tote her own water from the well, and whack unruly children upside the head with her cane when they got too loud.

"Bring the child in," Yestra hissed. Everything she said was either a hiss or a cackle... much to the amusement of the aforementioned unruly children. She'd answered the door before Theesa could even knock, then stepped aside to let Theesa and Jacob in.

"You knew were coming?" said Jacob "Word sure does travel fast, doesn't it..."

"You forget who you're talking to," said Yestra. "I knew what sex you were when you were still in the womb, boy. Let me see the baby."

Theesa handed the boy over without reservation. Yestra may be a bit severe in her demeanor, but she loved children (accept the unruly ones), and would never do anything to harm the infant. Theesa and Jacob stood back while Yestra performed her examination.... poking, prodding, tickling, listening... and a dozen other things that Theesa wasn't sure served any purpose at all.

"Don't just stand there like golems," said Yestra. "Sit down. This takes time, ya know."

There was only one chair in the room. Theesa sat in it, and Jacob stood behind her... resting his hand on her shoulder. Theesa looked up at him, and he removed his hand.

"The child is healthy," Yestra announced finally. "More healthy than most, I imagine."

"Yes, but who's is it?"

"I don't recognize him." She turned to face Theesa. "Never seen this boy before. Nope."

"What about the women," said Jacob. "Are there any pregnancies-"

"This boy is a month old. There isn't a woman in this town that can have a baby and hide it for a month without me knowing. This child isn't from this town. Not from this kingdom, I'd imagine."

"Why do you say that?"

"His features... look at that nose. Never seen a nose like that. Eyes, either. Strange color, he's got."

"Is there anything wrong with them-"

"Said he was healthy, didn't I!?" Yestra snapped.

"I meant... is he... human?"

"Looks human," said Yestra.

"Yes, but so do I... if you don't look too closely at my ears," said Theesa. "I meant is he maybe mixed with something?"

"Too early to tell that kinda thing. I don't think he'll be sprouting any extra eyeballs, if that's what you're askin.'"

"Are there any markings on the child?" said Jacob in his most official-sounding voice. "Anything to distinguish it?"

"No birthmarks. No scars or bruises."

"So... your expert opinion-"

"My expert opinion is that this is a healthy child that came from somewhere other than here. He ain't familiar... I didn't deliver him... he ain't from around here. That much you can be sure of."

"Do you think there's a possibility that someone would come looking for him?" said Jacob.

"Now why'd you ask ME a fool think like that? How in the seven hells should I know?"

"The baby is hasn't been abused," said Theesa. "Someone's been taking good care of him."

"Until they dropped him off on your floor without so much as a blanket," said Jacob. "And I thought MY parents were bad."

"Somebody loved this child."

"But that might not be the same person that comes looking for it," said Jacob. "Thanks for your time, Yestra."

"It ain't free, ya know. I gotta make a livin.'"

"Yes. Of course."

Jacob dropped a few coins on Yestra's table as he escorted Theesa out, baby held firmly in her arms.

"How's Paul?" Yestra called after them.

"Huh?" Theesa turned back. Yestra was staring at them... at Jacob, actually... giving him a very strange look.

"Paul. How's your husband?"

"He's fine... why?"

"Just bein' neighborly, that's all." Yestra frowned at Jacob, then closed her door. A few seconds later, her slightly scowling face appeared in the window.

"Now THAT is a strange old lady," said Jacob. "Not that all old ladies aren't a little strange."

"Oh, so I'm strange now, am I?"

"You're not old!"

"I'm older than I look, Jacob."

"Well... I don't think ANYBODY'S as old as Yestra looks. Even Yestra."

Theesa laughed, trying to ignore old woman's gaze following them as they walked.

---

The ironworks filled Cole's smithy a raging flood of heat.

But Cole wanted it hotter. He tossed more logs into the massive furnace, completely emptying his load of wood. The heat ignited the logs instantly, and they gave birth to still more tongues of flame. The fire was already larger and hotter than what the forge was intended to hold, but it wasn't enough. The waves of heat blistered Thigman Cole's skin as he stood before it.

No. Not enough.

Cole eyed the empty wheelbarrow an intense, almost maniacal stare. Then he glanced around the store... searching for more fuel.

There weren't any more logs... but there WAS fuel...

Oh yes. There was fuel.

Without a second though, Cole grabbed the large war-hammer from its place on the wall. It was an old weapon that he and his father had made together many, many years ago... while Thigman was just learning the craft. It was a good weapon. Strong and heavy.

Cole swung the mighty hammer and smashed the legs off of his workbench. The bench toppled... but before it could even collapse completely, Cole hit it again-

BANG!

The once-level surface turned to splinters before the hammer's assault. The weapon came down again and again, and with just a few strokes Cole had rendered his workbench to into scrap firewood.

Not enough.

There was a barrel and a wooden trough across the room... the barrel held water that he used to quench the red-hot iron. The trough contained a special mineral oil used for the same purpose. Cole dumped the contents of both out onto the floor, then dragged them one at a time over to the pile of wood that used to be his workbench.

WHAM!
BANG!
BANG!

Firewood.

He splintered the antique chairs that his wife had bought him for the shop. He removed his tools from the shelves... then tore the shelves from the walls and smashed them to pieces. The old desk that had been his father's... where Cole sat by his father's side and learned the business of business... became a pile of shattered, splintered planks.

Cole dropped his hammer and began throwing the newfound fuel into the furnace. The fire accepted Cole's offering with a hissing roar that spat a plume of flame out into the room, narrowly missing Cole. Cole didn't care. He kept tossing the wood into the fire until there was no more. He looked around the room again, searching for more wood. There was more... but not enough to make a difference. This was it.

Almost.

In one final sacrifice, Cole took his hammer and tossed it in as well. Then he smiled.

Yes. Yes, this was it.

The furnace was out of control. Its brick walls were red-hot, and were beginning to breath slightly with the heat... moving in and out like a giant lung. Each exhalation sent tongues of flame leaping out of the chimney... embers rained down onto the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. The heat was unbearable... but it had already been so for a long time. Cole's skin wasn't blistering any more. It was sizzling.

He stood motionless before the rampaging fire, then he suddenly dropped to his knees. The floor was so hot that it burned his skin through his pants. Smoke was already rising from his shirt and hair.

Cole stared unblinking into the flame... the flame that was crawling out of the furnace like a living thing... crawling out to claim the rest of the shop and Cole with it. Cole inhaled several deep, searing breaths of heat that scorched his throat and boiled the mucous in his nasal passages...

Then he spoke. The words came slowly and evenly... undisturbed by the slow melting of Cole's throat. His lips curled up into a smile as he recited the lines that had been burning in his head since the day began...

"From depths unknown
Which fools desire
Where shadows drip
From death's dark spire
Where embers rise
from damnation's pyre...
Come Forth-
The Priests of Iron and Fire..."

With the speaking of the final syllable, a new sound rose to dwarf the roaring of the fire. It was the wind... the roar of the air rushing into the gaping black emptiness that had appeared at the heart of the flame. The fire itself poured into the black knot, sending its heat and flame into whatever oblivion lay beyond.

"...yes..." Cole hissed. The blackness fed off of the flame... growing larger and larger...

"Yes!"

...expanding out into the room...

"YES, MY MASTERS!"

The sphere of darkness cracked open like a giant egg, releasing a whirlwind that screamed like a thousand damned souls calling out from the pits of hell. The whirlwind caught the flames and became a small tornado of fire... out of which several figures emerged.

There were six of them... each dressed in a long, thick robe that covered them from head to toe. Three of the robes were bright orangish-red... like the fire that surrounded them. The other three were a deep, deep blue-black... the color of wrought iron. The six figures stepped out of the furnace, and the whirlwind that brought them quickly spun away to nothingness. The fire in the furnace remained, however... still filling the shop with unbearable heat... a heat that neither Cole nor the mysterious figures he had summoned seemed to notice.

"You have called," said one of the red-robed priests. "We have come."

"We hope for your sake that you have not summoned us lightly," added one of the blue-robes.

"No," said Cole. He kept a kneeling position on the floor... eyes cast downward, never looking higher than the hem of the priest's robes. "No! I... I did what you asked! You said to... you said to make a fire and say the words when... when..."

"The child has come," said the fire-priest.

"Yes! It's here! It came to the LeMay's last night! They woke up and TH-THERE IT WAS!"

"Are you certain?"

"I saw the baby with my OWN EYES! This morning! It had EYES... EYES like you said it would! Gray like the sky! This is it! This is the one you want!"

"It is true," another iron-priest confirmed. "I can sense the disturbances... The echoes have touched this place."

"Tell us where," an fire-priest ordered.

"I cannot track the remnants without a reference point... we must know the place of arrival. From there, we can track the child until the remnants fade-"

"The LeMay's's had it at their house!" Cole blurted. "N-Not far... you just go down to the end of the road... and make a right... and its the s-second house! I'll TAKE you there!"

"That will not be necessary." A fire-priest gestured to the others. The other five began moving toward the door. The fire-priests seemed to float across the floor as if their feet were hovering above it... while the iron-priests moved with slow, determined steps. Steps that made no sounds. "We have another task for you."

"What is it, my masters!"

The priest that had gestured reached down and touched the top of Cole's head. An inferno of thoughts and images scorched through Cole's mind... and then were gone, leaving one impulse glowing in his mind like an ember.

"Yes, my masters!"

As the priest turned to follow the others, Cole got to his feet and ran... right into the furnace. He threw himself into the flames, embracing the fiery beast like a lover. The fire swallowed him hungrily. It quickly sucked the skin and fat from his body, and it gnawed on his flesh with teeth of red heat.

Cole never even screamed.

One of the iron-priests glanced back at Cole's blackening corpse.

"Was that necessary?" the priest asked.

"No," the fire-priest said calmly as they exited the shop. "No, it wasn't."

---

"Do you think he can tell us anything?" asked Theesa as they approached Gresham's home.

"I thought for certain that Yestra could tell us what we wanted," said Jacob. "But she couldn't... so who knows. If there WAS magic involved, Gresham can sniff it out. He's the best mage in the town."

"Also the only mage," Theesa replied.

Gresham's home was a small but imposing building of stone and iron... a sharp contrast to the wooden structures that composed the rest of the town. But then, given the number of explosions and strange rumblings that occurred behind its walls, it was probably for the best that it be constructed of sturdier stuff.

Theesa stood before the iron door. Jacob reached past her and knocked on the door with the pommel of his sword.

KLONG!
KLONG!
KLONG!

"Open UP!" Jacob bellowed. He was shouting almost directly into Theesa's ear. She shivered, and, of course, the baby started crying.

"wwwWWWAAA-AAAAA-AAAA"

"Oops, sorry," said Jacob.

"That's okay," Theesa rocked the baby in her arms, and he calmed down. He stopped crying just as a tiny rectangular window slid open in the mage's door. There were two windows... one at head level, and one a few feet lower. It was the lower one that opened.

A pair of eyes peered out.

"Hi!" said a child's voice. "I mean... ummm..." the voice continued at a lower octave: "Who seeks and audience with-"

"Skip the theatrics, kid... we need to see the old man."

"Oh. Okay."

The small window slid shut. There was pause...then a few clicks as the locks were disengaged. A second later, the door swung open slowly...

...verrrrry sloowwwwwly....

In the hallway beyond stood a small boy, no more than eight years old. He wore a light-gray robe with numerous stains and smudges along its length. The tiny sleeves pushed up on his bony arms. His hands were extended toward the door... fingers wiggling madly as the heavy iron construct kept swinging open.

As soon as the opening was wide enough, Jacob and Theesa slipped through.

"See!" said the boy in a voice that was almost giddy with excitement. "Did you see what I did!!! I opened the door! All by myself!"

"That was very good, Christopher!" Theesa smiled at the boy His hair was dark was plastered to his skin with sweat. Theesa had always thought that Christopher was much too young to be fooling around with magic... but then, magic wasn't her business. Christopher was Gresham's apprentice, not hers.

"You could be a little bit quicker next t-OUCH!" Theesa's heel caught Jacob in the shin. "Uhhh... yeah, ya did good, kid."

"REALLY!!!"

"I'm sure Gresham must be very proud of you. Speaking of which... we need to see him about something."

"Sure! This way!" The kid skipped down the hallway, gray robe flapping around his skinny legs.

"That kid is too happy for his own good," Jacob muttered.

"Oh, like you weren't the same way when you were his age."

"I don't think I ever WAS his age."

Theesa and Jacob followed Christopher into a small chamber in the rear of the house. The room was octagonal, with large sigils painted onto the stone walls with sparkling gold paint. The only furnishings were a pair of wooden stools and two enormous stone tables that each took up several walls. The tables were solid rock... but not the same as the walls. They were of a black and gray marble that had been polished to a reflective sheen. Theesa could see herself clearly in the stone.

"Oh, I look a mess..." she moaned.

"Nonsense," said Gresham.

The mage was a slim man of small frame and short stature... and dark eyes that seemed to twinkle with vitality even though Gresham was only slightly younger than Yestra. The only outward sign of his advanced age were a few wrinkles and a head full of grayish-white hair. He was every bit as lithe and lively as most men Jacob's age. Theesa wondered how much of that was due to Gresham's magic and how much was from his youthful, perpetually-optimistic spirit.

Gresham smiled and waved his visitors in. Rather than the typical robe or cloak, the mage wore brown pants and a loose-fitting shirt that was tucked into his black leather belt. If he'd strapped a sword to his hip and dyed his hair black he'd have made a very good rogue or adventurer. Gresham stood beside the larger table with his foot propped up on one of the stools. He was tying his boots.

"I'm sorry, were you about to go out?" said Theesa.

"Just about to go for a walk," said Gresham. "A man can only stand so much of these old stone walls. It might impress the tourists, but LIVING in this stone monstrosity can be downright depressing. Isn't that right, Christopher?"

"I like it here!" Christopher squeaked.

"You would," Gresham replied.

"I'm sorry to keep you," said Theesa. "But, well-"

"Oh, NONSENSE! I always have time for a good mystery! Let me have a look at your little visitor..."

"You know about it, too?" said Theesa as she placed the baby on the stone table. The marble was warm to the touch... almost body temperature.

"Who DOESN'T?" said Gresham. "It isn't every day that a baby drops from the sky!"

"Well... I don't know about dropping from the sky," said Jacob. "but he certainly got into a locked house somehow. Paul and I both looked... there were no prints or anything. Whoever dropped him off was either a very good thief, or..."

"Paul thinks there might be magic involved," Theesa added. Jacob nodded. "Is there?"

"Hmmmm?" Gresham was tickling the baby's chin, oblivious to everything they'd said. "What was that?"

"Magic?" said Jacob. "Can you... you know...." Jacob wiggled his fingers in the general direction of the baby. "...do your thing? Maybe tell us where he came from?"

"Well, I doubt magic will tell us THAT," said Gresham. "But I may be able to shed some illumination on just how this little one got here. Assuming there was magic involved."

Gresham ran his hands back and forth over the baby...

"Ahhh, yes..." he said.

"What?" Theesa worried.

"I think he likes me.... see?"

The baby's eyes were following Gresham's hands as they moved in slow, rhythmic motions.

"Can you tell anything?" said Jacob.

"You know... I don't USUALLY have an audience when I work..."

"Sorry."

Gresham took a deep breath and closed his eyes. His hands paused over the baby's head... seeming to hover there as if supported by an unseen force. After a few seconds, Gresham's hands floated down the baby's chest and paused again...

"Very interesting," Gresham mused. "I'm definitely sensing something... several somethings, in fact. Christopher, fetch me a crystal..."

"Yes, sir." Christopher grabbed a clear quartz crystal from the wooden rack on the other table. Holding the crystal gently with two hands, he brought it to Gresham.

Gresham took the crystal and began to pass it back and forth through the air over the child.

"I can use this crystal to sample the energies-"

KRIK!

"-OUCH!"

The quartz cracked in his hand. It didn't shatter completely, but one of the loose shards had pierced Gresham's palm.

"Christopher, you brought me a bad crystal!"

"No I didn't," Christopher retorted.

Gresham looked at the cracked crystal. The edges of the individual shards were tinged in black, as if they'd been scorched in a fire. The once-clear quartz now had a smokey tint to it.

"Egads!" Gresham gasped.

"What?"

"What happened?"

Gresham scratched his head.

"Christopher," he said slowly. "...bring me the lens..."

"Which one?"

"The one I told you never to play with but I know you do anyway. Fetch it for me."

The young apprentice left the room, then returned with a small wooden box. He placed it on the table beside Gresham. The interior of the box was lined in purple velvet, and a small glass disk lay nestled in the soft folds. The disk was slightly curved, and trimmed in gold. Gresham took the lens out and placed it over his right eye, lodging it between his eyebrow and cheek.

"That isn't dangerous, is it?" said Theesa.

"To the child? No. But if it reacts like the crystal did, then my new nickname will be 'LeftEye.'"

"Oh, be careful!"

"Theesa, the man knows what he's doing."

"Ohhh, my..." said Gresham as he examined the baby through the lens. The glass seemed to take on a rainbow-appearance as he leaned closer to the child. Gresham stepped back and extended his hands. He mumbled a few words, and a faint bluish haze appeared around his fingertips. When he lowered his hands toward the baby, the haze flashed bright green... then purple... then began to swirl with several colors that Theesa couldn't identify. Tiny white sparks crackled through the magical field... it looked as if Gresham was holding a tiny, multicolored thunderstorm in his hands.

Gresham watched it all through his wildly flashing eyepiece.

"Ohhhhhhhh, myyyy..."

"Gresham?"

"There's an awful lot of power packed into this little body."

"The child is magic?" said Theesa.

"Yes... but that isn't what's causing this-" Gresham nodded at the rainbow arcing between his fingertips. "This is something else entirely... not coming from the child at all."

"What is it?" said Jacob.

"Its a remnant," Gresham replied. "All magic... spells and such... leaves an echo of itself behind. A decent mage can detect these echoes. A GOOD mage can identify them by the type of spell that was cast and how long ago it was used. Apparently... I'm not as good as I thought. I can't tell WHAT this is, or where it came from. But its powerful. Dear GODS is it powerful..."

"Is it dangerous?" said Jacob.

"Incredibly," said Gresham.

"Oh, no! Is it going to hurt the baby?"

"Perhaps I should explain... the REMNANTS aren't dangerous at all... any more than an echo or a shadow. But its the thing that CREATED the remnant that worries me. What sound CAUSED the echo... what cast the shadow... THAT is certainly more powerful than anything I've ever seen before."

"Can you tell us ANYTHING about it?" said Jacob.

"Dear boy, looking at this thing is like seeing the shadow of an elephant's toenail and trying to figure out what the beast had for dinner. This is so far beyond me-"

"Excuse me, Theesa" said Jacob. He went to Gresham's side and began to whisper to the mage... whispers that Theesa could hear clearly.

"Gresham... someone or something left this child at the only place that has ever been a home to me. If there's something out there that means them harm, I need to know. If there's something out there that means this CITY harm... I need to know. Now I know full well that you've got all kinds of spells and magic in this place that you don't want us or Christopher to see, but now isn't the time for secrets or modesty. This is serious... and I think maybe you can do some things to find out more than you're letting on. If so... do it. Please."

"Okay," Gresham gulped. "All right...."

Jacob returned to Theesa's side.

"Sorry about that," he said to her. "Official business. You understand."

"All too well," said Theesa.

"Christopher, fetch me my focussing staff and the sigil paint."

Christopher nodded and left the room. While he was gone, Gresham returned the magic lens to its wooden box, then picked the baby up and deposited him gently on the floor in the center of the room.

"What are you going to do?" said Theesa.

"Something incredibly foolish," Gresham replied.

Christopher returned carrying a long, golden rod tipped with a large, expensive-looking crystal. It looked like a giant diamond. He also had a tiny paintbrush and a bowl filled with a sparkling gold fluid. He lay the rod down gently at Gresham's feet, then handed the brush and bowl to the mage.

"Very good, Christopher. Now would you step outside."

"But I want to watch the spell-"

"GO, boy!" Gresham snapped. "This is dangerous! Go outside in the yard and stay there until we're done here! And NO peeking through the windows!"

Christopher nodded nervously and scampered from the room.

"Theesa-"

"Don't say it, Jacob. I'm not going anywhere."

"But this-"

"SOMEONE left this child in my house. Until we find out who it belongs to, I will treat it as I would my own... if I had one. I'm not leaving."

"There is the possibility..." said Gresham, who was using the brush and the gold liquid to paint a complex design on the floor around the baby. "...very very small possibility... that this might blow a sizeable hole in the town. Or open a portal to somewhere unpleasant."

"Well then, standing outside won't really make much of a difference now, will it?" Theesa smirked.

"True." Gresham finished the large design, and was now surrounding it with several smaller ones. When he finished, he took up his golden rod and moved back.

The baby began to cry.

"He's frightened," said Theesa.

"So am I," Gresham replied. He held the two-foot rod at arms length and walked slowly around the sigils he'd painted on the floor. He pointed the wand's crystal tip at each one. "This spell," he said as he worked. "Will force energy into the remnants... possibly re-creating some fraction of the original spell. Although on a much, much smaller scale. And hopefully contained within this pentagram."

"So whatever spell brought the child here-"

"The re-creation won't be strong enough to do anything... I hope... but it'll be strong enough for me to study. Sort of like using a magnifying glass to read a book... but NOT using it to burn the pages."

"OR blow up the building." Jacob added.

"Or send the child back to Theesa's house," said Gresham.

"What?"

"Oh yes... if the re-creation is too strong, it could send the boy back to the original destination. Or somewhere else."

"Wait a minute!" Theesa protested. "I don't think I like this!"

"I don't like it either," said Gresham. "But this isn't just a matter of mere curiosity... we're dealing with something bigger than all of us. If there is a malevolence involved, then it'll be a threat to the entire kingdom, not just to us here in this room. It's imperative that we find out as much as we can about it. Right, Jacob?"

"Absolutely."

"At the cost of endangering child's life?!?"

"That isn't my intention." Gresham gave Theesa a kind and somewhat disappointed look. "You know me better than that. I'm taking every precaution."

"I know," Theesa sighed.

"Everything will be fine," Jacob said as he put his arm around her. Theesa began to protest, but somehow the words didn't quite make it out of her mouth. She was frightened. Frightened for the child. And Jacob's presence beside her was comforting.... perhaps more comforting than she wanted to admit. "I promise," said Jacob.

Theesa nodded at Gresham, and the mage continued his work. He stood just outside the symbol he'd drawn and pointed the gold wand at the child. The wand's crystal tip began to glow.... faintly at first, but the multicolored light began to intensify rapidly.

"Prepare yourselves," said Gresham. "This could get... interesting..."

Within a few seconds, Gresham's wand looked like a miniature star. All of the colors blended into one continuous blaze of intense white light... a light so bright that it made Theesa's eyes burn.

Gresham spoke, directing his words not to Theesa or Jacob, but toward the glowing ball of power hovering at the end of his wand. The mage's chants caused the wand to vibrate... Theesa could see Gresham's fingers struggling to hold onto the rod steady.

The baby squirmed innocently in the center of the sigil... while violent flashes of light rose from the floor around him. Each multicolored stream died in a brilliant but miniature explosion mere inches away from the infant's delicate skin. Sparks rained down on the child.... the baby watched them fall, but never reacted to their touch.

Gresham's steady chanting became a series of forceful shouts.

There came a loud, crackling sound as energy filled the room. The symbols on the floor began to pulse. The stone walls hummed in resonance with a some unseen force. Theesa felt the air grow hot and uncomfortable around her... it pricked her skin like the spines of a cactus. The prickling became a fierce and painful stabbing all over her body. Her muscles contracted involuntarily, trying to pull away from this energy that was all around her... and it was only then that Theesa realized that she couldn't move. Every muscle was locked in place... she couldn't turn, or twitch, or open her mouth to scream...

...she couldn't even breathe.

Panic struck her like a fist. And in that same instant, Gresham cried out in surprise... and pain-

FZZZZZZZAAAAAAAMMM!!

Everything went white. Theesa felt herself being yanked.. or thrown... in some direction she couldn't determine...

And then...

"That isn't my intention." Gresham gave Theesa a kind and somewhat disappointed look. "You know me better than that. I'm taking every precaution."

"I know," Theesa sighed.

"Everything will be fine," Jacob said as he put his arm around her. Theesa began to protest, but somehow the words didn't quite make it out of her mouth. She was frightened. Frightened for the child. And Jacob's presence beside her was comforting.... perhaps more comforting than she wanted to admit. "I promise," said Jacob.

Theesa nodded at Gresham, and the mage continued his work. He stood just outside the symbol he'd drawn and pointed the gold wand at the child. The wand's crystal tip began to glow.... faintly at first, but the multicolored light began to intensify rapidly.

"Prepare yourselves," said Gresham. "This could get... wait... do either of you get the feeling that we've-"

"Done this before?" Theesa finished.

"Yes..." Jacob said tentatively. "Its like... I remember this from somewhere. Like a dream, or..."

"This is no dream," Gresham said ominously. He was looking around the room, scanning the walls as if searching for something. Meanwhile, the glow from his wand faded and the baby began to cry. "Don't move," Gresham warned.

"But the baby-"

"Don't... move. Neither of you." Gresham walked slowly to the stone table and retrieved the lens from the wooden box. He once again placed it to his eye... then almost dropped it. "DEAR GODS!" he gasped.

"What is it!"

Gresham was turning around in circles, looking at everything in the room.

"The aura... its EVERYWHERE now... me... you... the child... EVERYWHERE! The wards didn't contain it... it leaked out-"

"What did it do to us!" Jacob said nervously. He quickly checked to see if he'd sprouted any additional appendages. Then he looked at Theesa. "You look okay," he said. "Do I?"

"I-I'm fine. Just a little scared."

"Gresham what have you done!?!"

"I've discovered something amazing..." said the mage, still gazing in awe through his magic lens. "This spell... the child..."

"What about the child?" said Jacob. "What do you see? What did you learn!?"

"You wanted to know where it came from... but perhaps your curiosity was a bit misguided. The question isn't WHERE the child came from... but WHEN!"

"When...?"

"The recreated spell took us all back a few seconds, where we merged with the bodies we inhabited at that time. The ACTUAL spell must have taken this child back... years?... centuries...?"

"You're saying that this baby-"

"Is from the FUTURE!" Gresham shouted. "This child was sent here from our FUTURE!"

"How far?" said Theesa.

"I don't know. And I don't DARE perform another test. Not here. I could send this entire town back into the barbarian ages!"

"But who has the power to send people into the past?" said Theesa.

"Can magic DO that!?" Jacob said incredulously.

"No," said Gresham. "Well... yes, in THEORY. But not in practice. I mean, some have claimed... but... this is just incredible!"

"So some mage in the future sent this child here to us?" said Jacob

"No!" Gresham said quickly. "No, not a mage! The amount of power I sensed is to great... and too chaotic. No mere mage could ever control such a thing. To even GENERATE that amount of magic would require..."

The color drained out of Gresham's face.

"...the end of the world," he whispered.

"What?" said Jacob. "We're asking about a child and now you're talking about the end of the world-"

"Because that's what it would require," said Gresham, still whispering in awe. "The destruction of an entire plane of existence. Or several. Or maybe even... all of them."

"Gresham-"

"If that power were harnessed, you could send a man from the end of time... all the way back to the beginning, if you wanted. But the paradoxes would be-"

"Gresham, we stopped understanding you several sentences ago," said Theesa. "All we know is that you think this child is from the future-"

"Oh, I KNOW he's from the future," said Gresham. "Of THAT, I am certain. But whether he's from next week, or several millennia from now... I can't begin to guess."

"But why did he come to US?" said Theesa. "Why did he appear in OUR house? Did someone send him there intentionally?"

"I don't know," Gresham replied, finally taking the glass lens from his eye. "Perhaps your house stands on the spot where he originally left from in the future. Or perhaps there ISN'T a reason... I mean, he had to appear SOMEWHERE, didn't he? Why NOT your house?"

"I don't like that answer, Gresham," said Jacob. "We have to know more-"

"Oh, we ABSOLUTELY have to know more! But I'm not qualified. I'm just not GOOD enough to attempt anything else without endangering us all."

"Well, who IS good enough!?"

"Only a few that I know... that I would trust. There's Kedron... but he's all the way in Bahn-Mohr."

"That's a mighty long trip, Gresham."

"Azward has a lot in insight into... strange energies. He's somewhat of expert, and so is his former apprentice, Krycek... but there's no TELLING where either of them are. I'm not being much help, am I?"

"No," said Jacob.

"Nonsense. We've already found out more than we wanted to know," said Theesa. "Can I take the child now?"

"Oh, certainly."

Gresham tapped the golden sigils with his wand to dissipate the magic. Theesa scooped the screaming child up in her arms. The baby stopped crying almost instantly.

"Hmph," said Gresham.

"What?"

"The child likes you."

Theesa smiled.

"I didn't mean that as an idle observation," said Gresham. The mage retrieved his lens and once again placed it to his eye. "...didn't think of this before..."

"Didn't think of what?" said Theesa. The mage was staring at her and the child through his lens... looking at them in a way that made her uncomfortable.

"Your aura and the child's are...very similar..." the mage remarked.

"What does that mean?"

"Could mean nothing. Could mean you both have similar temperaments or backgrounds... could be a coincidence. Or it could mean that you and the child are related."

"But I don't have any-"

"The child is from the future, Theesa. Just because there aren't any infants in your family NOW, doesn't mean that there won't be in ten years... or ten centuries. That might explain why the child just happened to appear in YOUR house..."

"But I can't have children, Gresham," said Theesa. "Everyone knows that I'm... that I can't..."

"Perhaps he's not a direct descendant. Don't you have a brother or a sister?"

"Yes, but they're miles from-"

"The future, Theesa. Who KNOWS what could happen in the future-"

"So you're saying that this baby is from Theesa's family... sometime years from now?"

"Possibly. Or maybe not. At the very least its an avenue for further study."

"I've heard enough about 'maybe' and 'possibly' and 'avenues for further study'," said Jacob. "What can you tell us for CERTAIN?"

Gresham sighed.

"For certain... this child had been or will be exposed to an astounding amount of energy. Energy with a very strong temporal component. That exposure brought the child here, to THIS time, from some undetermined point in the future. Whether that was done intentionally or accidentally... I still don't know."

"And you can't find out."

"Perhaps if I went to the point of the child's arrival I might be able to learn a little more, but-"

"Go," said Jacob.

"My house," said Theesa. "I'll show y-"

"No," said Jacob. "Gresham knows his way to your house. I'm taking you and the child to the town guard."

"What?!" Theesa protested. "Why!?"

"Because you were right about one thing, Theesa... I HAVE learned more than I wanted to. And I don't like it. This kid has been-"

"-or will be-" Gresham added.

"-mixed up in some serious stuff. Paul thinks maybe somebody might come looking for this baby that they lost."

"But Paul doesn't know anything about what Gresham said-"

"Always trust your instincts, Theesa... and my instincts don't like this one bit. I'm taking you to the sheriff were you and the baby can be safe while Gresham does his thing. After that, we'll search the town-"

"Search the town!?" Theesa protested. "For WHAT!?"

"Quietly... me and the guardsmen will just have a quiet look around... make sure there isn't anything suspicious going on. We'll post a guard at your house tonight."

"No," said Theesa. "I don't want armed men wandering around my house."

"Theesa-"

"I'm not a prisoner or a suspect... and neither is this child."

"I'm not saying that. It's just for your safety... just while we make sure nothing bad is going to happen to you."

"I don't need-"

"Yes, Theesa... you do."

Jacob gave her the same stern, serious glare that Paul used to have when he was on the guard. It was a stare that was universal among all the guardsmen... the "Please Don't Make Me Do This" stare. Paul and Jacob were both masters at it.

"Okay," Theesa relented. She was perfectly willing to argue her point until Jacob just gave up... but she didn't want to seem like such a shrew in front of Gresham. And besides... Jacob was probably right. "Fine. I'll go with you to the sheriff for just a few hours. But SOMEBODY is going to go and get something for his child to eat. And we have to let Paul know where I am."

"Those are the first two items on my list," said Jacob. "Gresham?"

"I'll study the house and bring what I find to the sheriff. I need to be in on whatever decision is made."

"And so does Paul."

"I'll stop by his shop on the way back," said the mage.

"Good."

"Why, oh why, did I go to sleep last night thinking this was going to be just another ordinary day..." Theesa sighed. "I should have known better."

"Hell, the day's just getting started," said Jacob. "Give it time... I'm sure it'll get much worse..."

---

Yestra was bringing in a bucket of fresh vegetables from her garden when she heard a knock at the front door.

"Yah, just a minute," she said as she placed the vegetables on the table.

The knock came again. It was a loud, forceful knock... which meant that it couldn't be anyone she knew. Everyone in town KNEW better than to knock on HER door like that.

Yestra grabbed a small knife from the table and hid it in the pocket of her apron. Then she peered through the tiny hole in the door.

There were six men standing outside. All were wearing robes... three were red, the others were a curious blueish-black color. All of their faces were hidden in the deep confines of their hoods.

"Who are you?" the old woman cackled.

"We have come for the child," said one of the red robes.

"Yah... but that ain't tellin me who ya are now, is it?"

"The child," said another of the red robes. "Where is it?"

"Don't know what you're talking about... no children here," Yestra answered truthfully. She checked to make sure that the door was still locked. It was.

The six men whispered among themselves for a moment. They were asking one of the blue-robed men a question, but he shook his head and muttered something that ended in "...must follow the trail exactly."

All six men turned back toward the door in a slow, ominous motion.

There was an uncomfortable pause. One of the red robes reached out-

"May we come in?" said a man in blue. He spoke suddenly, and a few of the others glanced at him. "We must speak with you about the child."

"What child would that be?" said Yestra... even though there could only be ONE child that would bring such strange men to her door. She cursed Theesa and Jacob for dragging her into whatever his was. "And nobody's gettin' into MY house until they tell me who they are-"

"Enough," the red-robe grunted. He touched the door-

FWOOOOM!

"EEEP!" Yestra backed away from the door as it disintegrated. There was a blast of heat that stung her skin even through her clothes. The door crackled... and then it was gone. Nothing but ash, cinders, and heat remained. The wall surrounding it was black, with embers glowing brightly within the darkness. The embers grew... the unburned wood began smoulder... tiny flames appeared...

The six men marched...floated?... into Yestra's house. The old woman was already hobbling toward the back door.

FWOOOOOOOM!!!

A wall of fire leapt up from the floor in front of her. The wall stretched completely across the kitchen, slicing her antique oak table in half. The two halves were burning furiously before they even hit the floor. Heat from the sudden blaze washed over Yestra. She screamed in surprise and pain as the skin of her face rose up in red blisters. The walls around her burst into flame.

"Grab her," said the priest who'd destroyed the door. "Search the house."

One of the blue-priests grabbed Yestra by the shoulder. The old woman turned sharply and reached into her apron. The knife came around and slashed the priest's throat-

K-TINK!

The blade cut the robe, but it met resistance just beneath. The knife slid harmlessly off of whatever armor the man was wearing under his robe.

The priest grabbed her hand and gave a slight, gentle squeeze-

KRACK!

Yestra's brittle fingers shattered like glass.

"EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

The priest squeezed a bit harder, causing the shards of bone to slice through her flesh. Yestra tried to pull away, but the priest's grasp was like a vice.

"Hold her." The priest in red... who must have been their leader... stood before Yestra as the other intruders began tearing through her house, seizing and destroying everything they could find.... seemingly oblivious to the fact that the small dwelling was now on fire.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT!?!" Yestra cried. "Please... I'll give you anything..."

"Tell us where the child is," said the priest. "It was here. Where did it go?"

Yestra began to speak... but then spat onto the man's robe. Her spittle sizzled and evaporated before it could even soak into the cloth.

"Clyst," said the red priest.

The other man tightened his grip on her shoulder. With one hand on her wrist, and another on her shoulder, it was just a simple matter for him to-

K-SSNAP!
CRACK!

Tear her arm right off of her body.

Yestra couldn't even scream. She just collapsed and curled into a convulsing, bleeding ball on the floor.

"What was that?" said another of the blue priests. "Why did you do that, Corvair?"

"Because we can," said the red-robed priest.

"I've got it," another blue priest announced. He was standing in the center of the floor. "I've picked up the trail of the child's departure. We can follow it now."

Corvair nodded. Then he reached down and touched the edge of Yestra's apron. The old woman's clothing burst into flames... adding more fire to the rapidly growing inferno that was her home.

"Lead the way."

The priests filed out of the burning house. One of the blue robes went toward Yestra-

"AGRAM!" Corvair shouted from outside.

Agram glanced at the old woman on the floor... then back at the priests waiting for him outside.

"She still lives," he said.

"The flames will take her," said Corvair. "We must follow quickly before the trail fades."

"But-"

"There is no place in this for compassion," said Corvair. "We all agreed on what must be done."

"But this woman-"

"Is of no consequence. Her suffering pleases me. Come. The child must be found."

Agram joined the others outside, leaving Yestra behind for the fire.

The old woman was so deep in shock that she didn't feel the flames spreading to her skin. She just lay there and burned...

---

Paul grabbed the wooden bucket from the man to his right, and quickly handed it to the person on his left... sending more water down the line toward the inferno.

Cole's blacksmith shop as a total ruin. The once-proud building was now a smouldering, flaming husk... a husk that was spewing hot embers and flaming debris onto the buildings around it. It was too late to save the smithy, but by putting the fire out and soaking the neighboring rooftops with water, they MIGHT just be able to keep Cole's disaster from turning into a city-wide catastrophe. The shopkeepers were the first to respond... Paul among them. HIS store was just one block downwind of the fire. It wasn't in any immediate danger, but it would be the second they let this fire get out of control. The fire brigade formed a shoulder-to-shoulder line from Cole's smithy all the way to the nearest well, where another group had assembled every bucket, bowl, and container they could find. The men quickly filled the containers and passed them down the line to the opposite end where the last man threw the water where would do the most good... then sent the empty container back down toward the well.

"FASTER!" someone shouted from the front of the line. "WE ALMOST GOT IT OUT!"

"Ohhh, my arms," said Myres... the man on Paul's right. Myres was a glassblower... and had been in poor health since last winter. Still, he was out here to save his store like everyone else.

"I got it, Pops!" Myres' young son came up behind him... leading a small group of boys. Reinforcements. Myres stepped back and the youngster took his place. The other boys relieved the more tired workers... adding a bit more speed to the brigade. Paul hazarded a glance at the smithy. The store immediately downwind of it was on fire, but it was a small blaze that was almost contained. Almost.

"KEEP IT COMING FASTER!" Paul shouted down toward the well. "FASTERR!"

The Myres boy handed him a bucket of water. Paul passed it on.

"Do you know what happened?" said the boy.

Paul shook his head. It was the truth... he DIDN'T know. And it was killing him. Cole wasn't the type to let his furnace get out of control, and yet that was OBVIOUSLY the source of the blaze. Something must have happened, but by the time Paul smelled the smoke and ran to the smithy, the fire had already claimed half the shop. He couldn't even get close to it, let alone go in to investigate. He could only assume that Cole was still inside... and that he was dead.

SOMETHING had happened... but what?

"Hey, Mister LeMay's..." the Myres boy pointed to the buildings in front of them. Smoke and ash from the blaze were blowing over the rooftops...

...but it was coming from the wrong direction!

"...another fire..." Paul gasped. Then he shouted. "ANOTHER FIRE!"

"What's over that way?" someone asked.

"Yestra's hut...." said the Myres boy.

"Yestra.... THEESA!!" Paul stepped out of line and shouted orders over his shoulder as he ran. "EVERY SECOND MAN FOLLOW ME. THE REST OF YOU CLOSE UP RANKS AND KEEP THAT WATER MOVING!"

The fire brigade burst into brief chaos as half its member's broke ranks and followed Paul.

They had a very hard time keeping up with him.

Yestra lived several streets away, near the edge of town. Paul saw the smoke and fire before he even reached the house... flames were leaping from the rooftop. Adjacent rooftops were already beginning to burn.

"THEEEESAAA!" he screamed. Yestra's front door was missing... the doorway was a gaping mouth that belched a continuous cloud of black smoke.

Paul never hesitated. He ran right through the doorway and into the house. The heat would have force a lesser man back, but wouldn't yield to his own survival until he knew that Theesa wasn't there.

"THEESA! YESTRA!" he shouted. The two names were all he got out... his next breath was so full of smoke that he dared not speak again. He dropped to the floor where the smoke wasn't quite as thick, then crawled further into the house. Burning pieces of the roof and walls fell down around him-

His hand brushed against something... an arm.

Paul tried to wave the smoke out of his face, but it was no use. He could hardly see. He grabbed the arm and pulled...

There was no body attached to it.

Paul's heart pounded in his throat. He was already crying from the smoke, but... but...

The arm was too big. It was a woman's, but not Theesa's.

Yestra.

Paul sighed in relief, then instantly felt guilty for doing so. A woman was still dead.

And Theesa could still be in here.

Paul kept crawling... crouching lower and lower to get out of the smoke. Something hot landed on his back, but he quickly brushed it off before it could ignite his clothes. When he put his hand back down on the floor...

...the rest of Yestra was right in front of him. Were it not for the thick smoke assaulting his nose, he would have smelled her corpse burning. There was nothing he could do for her. He had to keep looking for Theesa-

"PAUL!" someone shouted behind him.

"huh?" Paul turned... just as someone grabbed his foot.

"Paul, are you DAFT! You have to get out of here!"

"But Theesa-" Paul tried to yank his foot out of the man's grasp... but the man had tied a rope around his ankle. A rescue line. They'd come to rescue him... but he wasn't finished!

"PULLL!" his rescuer shouted.

"NO! WAIT!" Paul's lungs screamed from the smoke he inhaled. His head swam... and the rope yanked him backward across the floor. They were dragging him toward the door. "THEESAAAA! THEESSAAAA!"

And suddenly he was outside, laying face-down in the dirt. Someone threw a bucket of water on him...

...Paul hadn't even noticed that his shirt was on fire.

He coughed and gagged and gasped for air as the men formed a fire line. Buckets of water were already on their way to the surrounding houses.

"...theesa..." he coughed.

"Calm down...Paul..." For the first time Paul could see the man who'd come in after him. It was Sheriff Boylle... a big, burly man with a red face and a bushy, almost comical mustache. "What were ye THINKIN runnin in there!"

"Theesa... Theesa came to see Yestra... she could be IN there!"

"If she is..." Boylle looked at the remains of Yestra's house. "...I'm sorry."

"No! NO!" Paul got on his hands and knees... then slowly stood. "Gresham... she was going to Gresham afterward. I've got to go-"

"You've breathed a lot of smoke-"

"To HELL with the smoke!"

Paul darted off, racing toward the mage's house.

"PAUL!" The sheriff called.

"YESTRA WAS MURDERED!" Paul shouted back. "THE FIRE DIDN'T KILL HER! SHE WAS DEAD BEFORE IT STARTED... AND IF THEESA'S STILL ALIVE, SHE'S GOING TO BE NEXT!"

---

KLONG!
KLONG!
KLONG!

The iron door reverberated with an incessant pounding that sounded as if some giant were throwing boulders at it. Christopher shuffled out of Gresham's private chambers... where he was expressly forbidden to ever go... and approached the door carefully. He opened the lower hatch and peered out.

There were six men in robes waiting outside. A man with a blue robe was pounding on the door... but he stopped whe he saw Christopher.

The man leaned down slightly... Christopher still couldn't see the man's face.

"Hey!" Christopher said happily. "Oh... I mean, uhhh... Who Dares Disturb Gresham The Great!"

"Let us in," said the man who'd been knocking.

"We have come for the child," said a man wearing a red robe.

"M-m-me?"

"Not you, fool," another red-robe spat.

"The infant," said a blue-robe. "It was here. We will have it now."

"Ummm...OH! You mean the... oh... uhh... I don't know what you're talking about."

Before he'd left, Gresham had told Christopher not to talk to anyone about the child... even though everybody in the town must surely know about it by now.

"Nope," said Christopher. "No idea."

One of the men in blue sighed.

"Perhaps-" he began. He didn't finish. ANOTHER man in blue reached out and touched the door.

"HEEEY!"

The door's surface began to warp and ripple like waves in a pond. The once-solid metal rotated open like a giant iris... flowing away from the spot where the priest had touched it. The priest lowered his hand, and the door turned solid again, leaving nothing but twisted metal where the door had once sat.

"...wow..." Christopher gasped. "How'd you DO that!?"

The priest moved forward into the hallway-

FZZZZZZAAAAAAAMMM

A bolt of lightning shot down from the ceiling, striking one of he red-priests in the chest and throwing him backward into the others. The entire assembly tumbled back out into the street.

"Heehee!" Christopher chuckled. "Betcha thought you could get in, didn't ya! NOPE! HAHAHA! Gresham's gonna be mad when he sees what you did to his door. You'd better leave before he gets back."

The priest who's been struck now had a black mark scorched on the chest of his robe... but he didn't seem the least bit injured. He stood up and started toward the doorway again

"Wait," Corvair said. The priest looked up at the glowing rune painted on the wall above the door... then at the wall.

"Clyst?"

A priest in a blue robe walked over to the wall a few yards from the door. He drew back his fist... mumbled a few words-

KROOOM!

And smashed through the stone wall with a single punch. He stepped over the rubble and joined Christopher in the hall... bypassing the rune over the door. The other priests were right behind him.

"The child," said Clyst. "We have come for it."

Christopher raised his hands defensively in front of him. "G-g-GO AWAY!" he shouted, voice trembling with fear. "I know magic!"

"Search the house," Corvair ordered. A few of the priests split up and began to ransack Gresham's lab. The others surrounded Christopher.

"Go Away!" Christopher cast a spell... "I MEAN it!"

...and brightly colored butterflies began to flutter around the priests'' cloaked heads. They vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.

"...oops... I mean... uhh... GO AWAY or I'll turn you all into butterflies just like that!"

"Leave the boy alone," said Agram, one of he blue-robed priests.

"I told you to search the house," said Corvair.

"The boy means nothing. Leave him. Haven't you had enough death for one day?"

"Perhaps," said Corvair. He stepped away from Christopher, then turned toward one of the other priests. "Have you found the trail yet, Clevvoc? "

"No," the priest replied. "It takes time-"

"Then we have time for more death-"

"NO!"

Corvair thrust his hand toward Christopher, and flames leapt from his fingertips...

---

"This is bad," Gresham muttered to himself. "This is very, very bad..."

Theesa's house was in ruins.

No... perhaps 'ruins' wasn't the word.

Theesa's house was GONE.

Nothing remained but a small mound of smouldering rubble. Gresham couldn't tell if it had been knocked down and THEN burned, or set aflame and THEN knocked down...

...whichever it was... it wasn't even recognizable as a house any more.

Gresham stood in awe of the sheer violence of it all, almost forgetting the reason why he had even come. As an afterthought, he put his magic lens to his eye and examined the remains...

The magic was strong. Powerful and unfamiliar.

And recent.

Gresham approached the pile of debris to examine it closely-

-and the silver ring on his finger began to vibrate.

"Eh?" Gresham looked at the ring. The red jewel in it's center was flashing, and the ring itself was growing warm.

The defensive wards had been activated. Someone was using unauthorized magic at his house.

"...Christopher..." Gresham gasped... eyes fixed on the remains of Theesa's house. Something had smashed it to pieces. Burned it to the ground. And now there was an intruder at his house. "Christopher!!!"

---

"What is happening to this TOWN!?" said Jacob. He was standing on the wooden deck in front of the Sheriff's station... looking out at the plumes of smoke that were rising from various places in the town. Theesa stood in the doorway behind him.

"What do you think it is?" she said.

"Looks like the merchant's square," Jacob said slowly.

"Paul!?!"

"Can't be sure."

"We have to-"

"No, we don't. I brought you here to keep you safe... and that's what I'm going to do."

"But there's no one HERE!"

"They're all out fighting the fires. There's no prisoners in the cells, so there's no reason for anyone to stay behind."

"But Paul's SHOP could be on fire! He could be-"

"I don't think so," said Jacob.

"But you just said you didn't know! You said you couldn't be sure!"

"Paul is fine... of THAT, I am absolutely positive. Even if that is his shop... which it probably isn't... the merchants have an excellent fire-brigade. We've all fought fires before... we know how its done."

"What about the other fires?"

Theesa walked out on the deck and stood beside Jacob. Jacob looked at her... then frowned.

"Where's the-"

"Asleep. I put his basket on the Sheriff's desk and he went right to sleep. Try not to slam any doors."

Jacob nodded, but kept looking at the woman beside him. In fact, he found it very hard to STOP looking, even though the sky was rapidly filling with smoke not far away.

"Theesa," he began. "I... I think there's something-"

"LOOK! Another one!" Theesa pointed to another puff of smoke rising from the rooftops not far away. "Is that GRESHAM'S house?!"

"By the gods," said Jacob. "I think it IS!"

"Jacob, what's happening?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what are we going to do-"

"I don't KNOW!!!"! he shouted.

Inside, the baby started crying.

"I'm s... I'm sorry, I-"

"I wish Paul were here," Theesa remarked as she went inside to calm the child.

"We're going to stay here and wait for Boylle and the others go get back... that's what we're going to do!" he shouted after her. When there was no reply, he turned back to the town and leaned heavily on the railing around the wooden deck.

"...gods, I wish Paul were here," he muttered.

---

Paul never expected to find this.

Gresham's house... the miniature fortress of stone and iron... the strongest, most well-protected building in the entire town... was in pieces. Two of the walls were reduced to piles of rubble spilling out into the street. The remaining walls were black with smoke and soot, and most of the roof had collapsed inward to completely crush whatever was inside. There was very little open fire remaining, but smoke still rose from the walls and pieces of rooftop as whatever flammable components they contained still burned.

It looked as if one of Gresham's spells had gone horribly wrong... Paul knew better. A mage of Gresham's talent didn't just blow up his own house... especially not on the same day that mysterious fires started springing up all over town. Whatever had happened to Cole and Yestra, had come here too.

Paul wandered the perimeter of the rubble, looking for signs of... anything. There really was no fire left to put out, and even if there were, there wasn't anything he could do by himself. Everyone in the town was already engaged at Cole's and Yestra's. But he had to know if anyone was inside. Or HAD been inside when... whatever... happened.

"Theesa? Gresham?"

Paul heard something. A slight movement... and a voice?

"Is anyone here!?" Paul shouted as he started picking his way through the rubble toward the sound. "Is anyone alive!? Theesa, is that you-"

It wasn't Theesa.

Gresham knelt amid the debris holding something in his arms. Paul couldn't see what it was... and the mage didn't respond when Paul called out to him.

"Gresh? Gresham?"

Paul approached the man, and heard the sound that he'd heard before. At first he thought Gresham was muttering some spell... but no. The mage was crying. He held a tiny figure in his arms... a thing barely recognizable as human.

The boy.

The lower half of Christopher's body was scorched black... the flesh seared completely off of the bone. The upper half had fared only slightly better. The apprentice's blistered arms lay at odd angles to his torso. They'd been shattered, as had Christopher's skull and the majority of his ribs. Paul could see at least one rib protruding from the bloody chest like an accusing finger pointing at nothing. Half of the boy's face was missing. The hair was all burnt away, and one bloody eye stared unblinking up at the tendrils of smoke that still rose from his body.

Gresham clutched the still-smouldering mess to his chest as if the boy were still alive. Streams of tears rolled down the mage's face as he wept. He wept like a man who'd lost his one and only friend in the world... which, perhaps, he had.

He didn't even seem to notice Paul standing beside him until Paul's hand grasped his shoulder.

"Gresham?"

Gresham looked up at Paul.

"...why?..." said the mage.

"Gresham, what happened?"

"Why the boy? He... he couldn't have hurt them... couldn't have stopped them..."

"Them who? Who did this?"

"They could've taken what they wanted... they didn't have to... to..."

"Gresham, was Theesa here when that happened? Theesa and Jacob?"

"THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO DO THIS!!" Gresham screamed. He looked back down to the boy. "...they didn't have to... kill him... not like this..."

"Gresham, SNAP OUT OF IT! The boy is DEAD, I'm SORRY! But you're not helping-"

"He... he couldn't have hurt them even if he wanted to..."

"Gresham, PLEASE!" Paul shook the mage's shoulder. "Was Theesa here with Christopher when it happened!? Are there any more... any more... bodies?"

Gresham slowly shook his head.

"Gresham, where did they go? Did you see them-"

Gresham waved his hand in the general direction of the Sheriff's office, which was not very far away.

"How long ago did this happen, Gresham? How long since you saw Theesa?"

The mage's chin rested on his chest, with one hand covering his eyes. Sobs wracked the mage's slim frame.

"Gresham... the people that did this are following Theesa. I don't know how Cole is connected... but the trail started there and its following wherever Theesa went."

Gresham didn't even hear him.

"GRESHAM! If I'm right, the people who killed Christopher are on their way to the Sheriff's office right now! Theesa and Jacob are in terrible, terrible danger... I need your HELP! I need your MAGIC, Gresham!"

Nothing.

"Gresham, PLEASE! If these people can do this to your house... I don't know if... Gresham? GRESHAM!"

Paul shook the mage again, but there was no response. Gresham was gone. He still knelt at Paul's feet, holding Christopher's corpse in his hands... but the mage simply wasn't there any more.

"Okay then," said Paul. "I'll do it myself."

Paul looked around the debris for any of the magical trinkets and items that Gresham kept laying around... anything that would be even REMOTELY useful...but all he saw was broken stone and twisted metal.

"I'm sorry, Gresham," Paul said. "About the boy. I know he was like a son to you... I thought that maybe,... maybe you'd like to get the people that did this to him. But I guess not. So... I'm sorry"

Paul left the mage to his grief... he really had no other choice. He had to save his wife.

---

"Someone's coming!" Jacob shouted from outside. He leaned into the Sheriff's office. "We got visitors."

"Paul-"

"No. Six guys in robes.... coming this way."

"Robes?" Theesa went to the window.

"No!" Jacob ordered. "Stay away from the windows. Take that baby and go... uhh... to the cells."

"You want me to lock myself in a cell!?"

"Safest place in the building... just go."

"But we don't-"

"GO!"

"Okay! Okay!"

Theesa took the baby down the hallway at the rear of the building, where there were four small rooms with metal doors. All four doors stood open. Theesa peeked in. The room was about the size of a large closet, and it smelled horrible. Sweat and urine. And other things Theesa didn't want to think about.

"Oh, I'm not going in there," she said. There was a desk and chair at the end of the hall... it was where the guard on duty sat. There wasn't anyone there now, so she sat down... and waited.

Meanwhile, Jacob descended the steps to the street. He had one hand on the pommel of his sword.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" he said to the robed figures that were approaching the building. There were six of them... three dressed in bright red robes, and three in a odd dark-blue color. When they got a little closer, Jacob saw that the men in red weren't walking... they were floating. The bottom of their robes hung beneath their feet (if they had any), and were hovering less than an inch above the ground.

"Now that is creepy," he muttered to himself.

"We have come for the child," said the red-robe at the front of the procession.

"Give him to us and we will let you live," added a blue-robe near the back.

"Oh, is that so?" said Jacob.

"The child was here," said another blue robe. He wasn't speaking to Jacob, but to the other priests. "The trail leads into that structure. We must search before the trail fades-"

The robed strangers walked... or floated... toward the building, but Jacob stepped in front of them.

"I'm afraid this 'structure' is off limits to you... by order of the Sheriff's Office. The only way inside is for me to arrest you and CARRY you in... and you gentlemen don't want that. Trust me."

The robed men kept right on coming... straight toward Jacob.

Jacob drew his sword.

"Maybe I'll break it down so you can understand it better," said Jacob. "To get in that building you're gonna have to go through ME first. Ya got that? You UNDERSTAND that?"

"Yes," Corvair hissed eagerly. "I believe we do..."

---

Part Two

The robed men moved to surround him. Jacob took a step back... eyes darting from one stranger to the other, trying to see just how they were going to come at him. None of them LOOKED like fighters, but one of the first things Paul taught him was that perception and reality weren't always the same thing. His grip tightened on the hilt of his weapon.

"We don't have time for this," said one of the men in blue. "He is insignificant... we should leave him-"

"Entertainment is never insignificant," said a man in red... obviously the leader. "He dares stand in our way. For that, he will BURN-"

Jacob saw it coming. The red priest thrust his hands forward and a long tongue of flame exploded from his fingertips. Jacob threw himself to the ground, rolling under the fireball and coming to his feet near the priest who'd released it. Jacob struck without hesitation, his blade arced toward the priest's throat

K-KLANG!

The decapitating blow was intercepted by a nimble hand. One of the blue priests had deftly reached out and grabbed Jacob's blade. The sharp edge SHOULD have sliced the hand from the foolish priest's arm... but it didn't. The sword recoiled as if it had struck a solid wall and not soft, yielding flesh. The priest's fingers coiled around the blade and yanked it out of Jacob's grasp as effortlessly as snatching a toy from an infant.

Unfazed, Jacob slid the dagger from his belt and buried it into the blue priest's chest-

KLINK!

The blade struck something solid beneath the robe. Armor. The priest didn't LOOK like he was wearing armor under his robe... but he must have been. Jacob adjusted his strategy accordingly. As the other priests moved in around him, Jacob spun and kicked the legs out from under the one who'd snatched his sword. In the same motion, he delivered a spinning back-kick to another priest's neck. Both men went down in heaps of ruffled robes. The first man got up immediately, but he second stayed down... wheezing and gasping through the bruised, swollen tissues of his throat. None of his compatriots even looked at him. And neither did Jacob.

One of the red priests floated in front of him in what Jacob assumed was a surprise attack.

"You Dare-" the priest began as he reached for Jacob. The air shimmered around his hands like-

"SHUT up!"

KRACK!

A front-snap kick toppled the priest like a pile of dirty laundry. But pain shot up Jacob's leg... his BOOT WAS ON FIRE! The foot that he'd kicked the priest with had sprouted bright orange flames that were quickly traveling up his leg!

"YAAAGH"

Jacob tried to pat the fire out with his hands, but someone came up behind him. Jacob drove his elbow back into the man's face... twice. Then hit him with a back-fist strike. He turned just as one of the red priests let loose with a fireball.

"Wha-"

The two-foot ball of flame struck Jacob in the center of his chest... hitting with such force that it sent him flying backward-

-right through the window of the Sheriff's headquarters.

Jacob destroyed the window and everything in his path on the way to the opposite wall... where he demolished one of the weapon cabinets.

"JACOB!"

Theesa ran out of the back room. She snatched a horse-blanket from the closet and threw it over Jacob's leg, suffocating the flames that had already spread to mid-thigh.

"AAAAAAAARRGH! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!!"

Jacob scrambled to pull off his smoldering armor. The charred leather sizzled noisily, and the metal studs imbedded within the armor glowed red hot... searing his skin.

"AAAAAGH!"

Theesa tried to undue the dozens of straps and buckles that held the contraption on... but the buckles burned her fingertips when she touched them.

"GET IT OFF!" Jacob screamed. His face was red and blistered from the heat. The stench of burnt hair and singed clothing filled the room.

"YAAAGH!" Jacob undid the final buckles himself, and Theesa yanked the front of the armor free... taking his shirt and a few patches of skin along with it. Jacob rolled over onto his side and threw up from the pain.

"Jacob, let me see your wounds-" Theesa began.

"No time," Jacob coughed. "They're coming in." He pointed to the weapon cabinet that he'd smashed on the way to the floor. "Crossbows..."

Theesa grabbed a crossbow and a bolt from the cabinet. She tried to load the weapon. She knew how it was done, but she simply lacked the strength to pull the bolt into the firing position.

"I can't!"

"Here-"

Jacob sat up and took the weapon from her. He loaded it just as the priests started up the steps.

"Gimme the rest of the bolts and get out of here!" said Jacob. "I'll hold them off as long as I can!"

"Jacob, I'm not-"

"GO! Take the back way!"

"There IS no back way!"

"Third cell on the right," said Jacob. "There's a secret hatch in the floor... in case someone ever locked us in our own cells. The tunnel leads outside! Take the child and GO, Theesa... PLEASE!!"

WHAM!

The front door flew from its hinges, shattered by some tremendous blow. Robed figures began streaming into the room.

"GO!"

Theesa sprinted for the cells as Jacob fired the crossbow at the first priest-

wzzzz-KLINK!

The bolt had enough force behind it to penetrate most lightweight armor... but it bounced harmlessly off of the blue-robed priest's chest.

"Damn!"

Jacob immediately sprang behind a nearby desk as a fireball thundered across the room. He'd barely survived the first direct hit... he KNEW he couldn't take another. The fireball destroyed the floor where he'd been laying an instant before... and it splashed streams of fire over the walls and furniture, setting the whole room ablaze.

Jacob sprang up from behind the desk and fired another bolt. The missile flew straight and true... right toward a blue-priest's head-

wzzzzz-KLANK!

-where it bounced off of the man's chin without leaving so much as a nick.

"What the HELL!"

Jacob frantically loaded another bolt. He aimed his weapon and fired at the same time one of the fire-priests pointed at him. A tendril of flame incinerated the bolt in mid-air, and it continued on toward the crossbow that had fired it.

FWOOOM!

Jacob released the crossbow at the last instant, sparing his hand from the weapon's fate... being reduced to red-hot cinders in the blink of an eye.. The heat from the blast scorched Jacob's arm from wrist to shoulder as he ducked back behind the desk.

A second fire ball demolished the desk, but Jacob was already running for the hallway. A series of fiery explosions chased him across the room. He snatched another sword from the weapon cabinet as he passed it-

BOOOOM!

Then the cabinet, and the wall behind it, were gone in a roaring cloud of flame. Taking his fresh sword with him, he rounded the corner and headed for the third cell on the right. The priests were one second behind him. Fortunately, there was no sign of Theesa or the child.

"Thank the gods she actually LISTENED for once," Jacob huffed as he dove into the cell. He swung the metal door closed behind him, and it locked automatically.

The cell's floor was hardwood, but there was a hatch in the corner... placed so that its edges blended in with the seams in the planks. Jacob stuck his finger into the knot that served as a handle, and he pulled. The hatch swung up on its hinges-

-just as the priests arrived at the cell. Jacob heard the squeal and groan of stressed metal, he turned toward the door.

The metal door split in half down the center... and both halves pulled away from the middle like a curtain. Beyond it, one of the blue-robed priests had his hand outstretched, as if he'd just touched the now-ruined cell door with his fingertip.

"Give us the child," he said.

The fire-priest behind him didn't wait for an answer. He pointed at Jacob-

-and Jacob dropped down into the secret tunnel. Flames roared overhead, incinerating the open hatch and sending a blast of superheated air down after him. Jacob ignored it... just as he ignored the burns on his chest, arm, and leg. If he actually stopped to realize how injured he was... how much pain he SHOULD be in... he'd go into shock.

Then there'd be no one to protect Theesa.

The 'secret exit' was just a narrow tunnel went under the street to another hidden hatch thirty yards from the building. It was just wide enough for an armed and armored man to crawl through... barely. Jacob scrambled for the other end... moving as fast as his injuries would allow. His burns scraped painfully against the rock as he crawled, but he kept going. He heard a noise behind him, and redoubled his efforts when he realized what was coming...

The end of the tunnel was just ahead. The hatch was open. He could see the daylight-

FWOOOOM!!

A huge ball of flames roared down the secret passage behind him... scorching everything in its path and leaving the stone walls glowing red hot.

"YAAAAA!!!" Jacob screamed. He crawled faster... faster... he was almost there...

Too late!

He felt the heat from the fireball washing over him... blistering his legs and back as it overtook him.

"HELLLLPPPP!!" he shouted, stretching on hand toward the exit... so close... but still too far- "AAARRRRRRRRGGHHH!"

Something grabbed his arm. Jacob felt himself being pulled forward... upward... Paul LeMay yanked him up and out of the tunnel just as the ball of flame belched forth, dousing them both in a wave of heat and soot.

"Theesa," Jacob gasped.

"I'm right here!" Theesa took one of Jacob's arms, and Paul took the other. Together they pulled him to his feet and lead him away from the tunnel... which was still spouting flames.

"What the hell is going on!" said Paul.

"They came for the baby..." said Jacob. "Six of 'em... And they've got some serious magic behind 'em. We need Gresham, Paul... we need the mage!"

"They've already gotten to Gresham," Paul said stonily.

"Oh, No! They killed Gresham!?!" said Theesa.

"No, they didn't kill him... but they may as well have," said Paul, shaking his head. "For what they did, they may as well have driven a sword right into his heart. He can't help us."

"What do we do, Paul," said Jacob. "They're too strong... what do we do-"

"The stables. There's weapons and supplies there. We get Theesa and this baby out of here, then we find a way to deal with whoever these bastards are."

"Paul, I'm not going anywhere without-"

"Not NOW, Theesa!" Paul snapped. "They've killed Yestra... Cole... tortured Christopher to death-"

Theesa gasped at the boy's name.

"I'm not gonna let this go on. Once I know you're safe, Theesa, they're going down. I'm taking them down personally."

"Paul, you're not in the town guard any more!"

"I don't' need to be," said Paul. "These bastards came to MY town and terrorized MY wife! I'm not going to just stand by and-"

"Perhaps now isn't the best time for this conversation." Jacob pointed to the sheriff's office, where flames and thick black smoke poured from the windows. The roof was on fire, and, just as burning embers began to float toward the neighboring buildings, the front wall of the sheriff's's office exploded outward... sending fire and debris far into the street. The rest of the building immediately began to collapse, but not before six sinister figures floated out of the inferno... their robed shapes outlined by the flames.

"The stables," said Paul. "Jacob, can you run?"

"I can damn sure try."

"Come on, then!"

Paul ushered Theesa along, and Jacob hobbled after them both. Theesa held the infant in her arms, and it protested loudly at the sudden jostling.

"Uh-oh!" Jacob looked behind him. All six priests had gathered in the street, and they were all looking at directly at the fleeing party. One of the fire-priests raised his hand... "Change of plans!" Jacob shouted. "TAKE COVER!"

Paul yanked Theesa and the baby to one side. Jacob darted in another direction.

Three fireballs streaked across the street, roaring between Jacob and the others... separating them with a brief wall of flame. Jacob heard Theesa screaming. Then Paul shouted.

"JACOB, LOOK OUT!"

Jacob heard a roaring sound behind him... he turned just in time to see the three fireballs TURN AROUND and come back for them. For HIM!

"Whoa-"

Jacob dropped to the ground as heat and smoke washed over him like a flood. He rolled out of the way and tried to rise-

"STAY DOWN!" Paul shouted.

Heat was all around him now. The fireballs were circling them like predators... growing larger and faster until they were a continuous ring of flame three yards in diameter. Theesa, Paul and Jacob stood at the heart of the inferno. Walls of fire six feet high separated them from any hope of cover or concealment... they could catch only fleeting glimpses of the surrounding buildings through the flames.

"We're SURROUNDED! What do we do NOW, Paul!?"

"We wait," Paul replied stoically. "Jacob, give me your sword."

"It won't do you any good," said Jacob as he handed over his weapon. "The blue ones have got some kind of armor..."

"Then I'll just have to be more discerning in my choice of target."

"They're SKIN is armored!" Jacob added. "There ARE no targets! And the red one are some kind of mages-"

"Paul, you can't fight them!" said Theesa.

"I can for a few seconds, and that's all you need. When they lower the flames to enter, I'll attack and keep them busy while you run past-"

"The hell you will!" Theesa spat.

"Theesa-"

"NO, Paul! STOP dismissing me like I'm some kind of child! These men are DANGEROUS and I'm not going to let you KILL yourself! There has to be another way!"

"Oh, yes," said Paul. "There's another way. They're here for the child, so you could hand it over to them and PRAY that they just take it and go. But they're KILLING people, Theesa! They're killing innocent people to get this baby.... is THAT the kind of group that you want to hand this child over to?"

Theesa looked at the baby in her arms.

"What if... what if he belongs to them?" she said reluctantly, as if it pained her to say the words. "Gresham said... he said the child was from the future. What if... they're just here to take him back where he belongs. Back to the future. What if they just want to take him back to his parents-"

"And how many people are they willing to KILL to do that?" said Paul. "If they wanted the child... if they had a legitimate claim to him, all they had to do was ASK!"

"SURRENDER THE CHILD!" a voice boomed from beyond the flames.

"Jacob," said Paul. "Take Theesa and the child... when they lower the flames-"

Six shadows appeared in the fire between them and the ruins of the sheriff's's office. The shapes came forward slowly... seemingly untouched by the inferno around them. They didn't react to the flames that licked at their robes... and the flames didn't react to them. The priests floated through the fire as simply as a man would walk through a curtain.

"...they didn't lower the flames," Paul gasped.

"So much for THAT plan," said Jacob.

"The child," said one of the priests in red. It wasn't a question or demand... in fact, it wasn't even directed at Paul or the others. The priest turned to one of the men in blue. "Clevvoc. Is this the child?"

Clevvoc stepped forward, then nodded.

"The echoes in the timestream converge here. That child is outside of its natural place... it is the one we seek."

"WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE!" Paul demanded.

Some of the priests looked at him. But none of them answered.

"The search is finished," said Corvair, his smile barely visible under the shadow of his hood. "Incinerate them all."

"WAIT!" another iron-priest shouted. "We should take the child with us, so that we can-"

"You have once again forgotten our purpose for being here, Agram," said Corvair. "The child must die."

"Noooo!" Theesa cried. Jacob held her... while Paul stared at the priests standing before the wall of flame.

...or was he staring at something else?

"Or we can study it," said Agram. "There is much we can learn."

Corvair nodded slowly.

"Indeed there is," he said. "We shall study its ashes. BURN THEM!"

All three fire priests raised their hands-

wwzzzzz-THWUCK!

Corvair lurched forward as a bolt from a crossbow sank into his shoulder.

"AAAAARRGH!" He growled.

Three more bolts whizzed through the flames, but they either bounced off of the iron priests or hit nothing at all. Corvair staggered forward, a dark blood-stain radiating from the bolt protruding from the back of his left shoulder. He fell to his knees... blood pouring from the wound. The ring of fire surrounding them flickered and finally vanished... revealing the rugged, stone-faced members of the town guard.

Sheriff's Boylle and seven men stood in a semi-circle around the scorch-mark that was the remains of Corvair's fire-barrier. Boylle had his weapon... a monstrous bastard sword... drawn and ready. His shield was slung across his back. Four of the other guardsman had loaded crossbows pointed at the priests.

"Nobody move. We won't miss this time," said Boylle said through gritted teeth. "You gentlemen... and I use that term with the utmost sarcasm... are under arrest for murder and arson. Those are hangin' offenses. And, since you've just BURNED our jailhouse, it looks to me like the only thing we can do with you is to kill the lot of ya right here. I might be convinced otherwise if you surrender quietly. Then again... maybe not."

"Sheriff, look out! They're DANGEROUS!" Jacob shouted.

"So am I," said Boylle. "Paul... you and the lady might want to get yourselves to a safe distance. You too, Jacob. You look hurt. The rest of ya... drop any weapons you may have and lay flat on the ground, NOW!"

"Heh, heh, heh, heh..." Corvair chuckled. "The lambs come to the slaughter and make DEMANDS of their sacrificers! It is indeed the end-time!"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about-"

"Hell is EXACTLY what we are about," said Corvair. "Clyst. Zeadryl. Simox.... destroy these fools!"

"FIRE!" Boylle ordered

The four archers fired, and the others prepared to charge. The bolts flew toward the most dangerous targets... the fire-priests. But with a wave of their hands, Zeadryl and Simox released two arcs of flame that reduced the missiles to ashes in mid-air... and then continued on to the men that had fired them.

The guardsmen either dropped to their knees or scattered. One archer was a bit too slow. Zeadryl's arc of flame caught him across the midsection and sliced him in half as cleanly as a razor. The upper and lower halves of his torso were already burning furiously when they hit the ground. He didn't even have a chance to scream.

"DORRIN!" Boylle shouted.

The remaining archers scrambled in different directions... firing as they went. Boylle and the other swordsmen charged in behind the volley, converging on the priests The two fire-priests were so busy picking the missiles out of the air that they couldn't deal with the charging soldiers.

That was Clyst's job.

The iron priest lunged into the charge, letting the guardsmen's weapons bounce off of him. He drove his fist into one guardsman's chest. Ribs shattered... blood and bone exploded out of the young man's back. He immediately grabbed another man's head-

CLANG!

A sword bit into the fabric of Clyst's robe... but could not penetrate the skin beneath.

Clyst squeezed. The guardsman's head cracked and imploded in his grasp. He swung the shattered skull at another man. The guardsman ducked under and slashed with his weapon... it WOULD have been a killing blow, if the sword had managed to pierce the priest's skin. The guardsman twisted of Clyst's reach just in time.

KLANK!

Sheriff's Boylle had tried to impale Clyst from behind. Clyst spun and swung his fist. Boylle brought his shield up, and the priest's fist struck it-

CLONNG!

The impact sent Boylle AND his shield flying backward.

Meanwhile, Corvair was shouting to the other priests:

"Agram! Clevvoc! Bring me the child's corpse!"

Two iron priests turned and converged on Theesa. Jacob jumped in front of her, and then Paul jumped in front of HIM.

"RUN!" Paul shouted. "BOTH OF YOU!"

"GO, Theesa!" Jacob pushed Theesa away. "The stables! The key is hidden under a loose brick in the well! GO!"

Theesa ran as Paul charged the iron priests-

"NO!" Jacob shouted. "Paul, DON'T!"

He swung his sword at Agram... and missed! But the heavy sword's momentum carried him around into a spinning back-kick, as Paul had intended all along. Paul's heavy boot connected with the priest's groin.

"UNGH!" Agram squealed and doubled over. Paul continued around, this time striking with the blade-

KTANK!

The blade rebounded off of the side of Agram's head... doing no damage, but instead knocking the priest off balance. Agram fell on his rear in the dirt as Clevvoc reached for Paul. Paul twisted and hacked at Clevvoc's waist-

KTANG!

Clevvoc's hand darted out and tried to grab the blade, but Paul was too fast. He delivered as spinning slash to Clevvoc's face-

KLANG!

The recoil traveled down the blade and nearly twisting it from his grasp, but the blow didn't even scratch Clevvoc's skin.

"...I'll be damned," Paul muttered.

"Yes, you are!" said Clevvoc. He lunged for Paul, but Jacob foot caught the priest in a hook-kick to the back of the head... followed by a roundhouse kick to the lower spin. Clevvoc dropped to his hands and knees, where Paul immediately kicked him in the face.

WHUMP!

Clevvoc went face-down in the dirt.

"I'm getting to old for this," said Paul.

"You've been too old for this for years," said Jacob. "BEHIND YOU!!"

Agram had gotten up and grabbed Paul around the chest, pinning his arms to his side. He squeezed.

"UNNNGH!" Paul groaned. He dropped his sword.

"This makes no sense!" Agram hissed. "If you won't give us the child, then at least RUN! Why are you FIGHTING?! They're going to KILL YOU ALL! Don't you UNDERSTAND!?"

Paul lifted his boot and brought his heel down on the priest's foot... at the same time, he jerked his head backward, driving the back of his head into Agram's nose. Agram loosened his grip. Paul tore himself free just as Jacob hooked his arm around Agram's neck.

"GOTCHA!"

Jacob drove his fist repeatedly into the priest's kidneys. Beneath the robe, the priests flesh felt remarkably like... flesh. Paul couldn't feel any armor, but it HAD to be there...

Agram twisted suddenly and swept his arm back, knocking Jacob aside like a child-

KRACK!

Paul's fist hit Agram's jaw like a rock. An instant later, a second punch to the stomach sent all the wind rushing out of the priest's lungs. Paul stepped back and delivered a front-snap kick just as Jacob recovered his sword and swung it at the priest's unguarded back.

K-TANK!

The sword bounded off. The kick didn't-

KRACK!

Agram dropped to his knees... swooned... then toppled over onto his side.

"Somebody tell me what the hell is WRONG with this thing!" said Jacob, holding up his sword. "I swung as hard as I could... and NOTHING! Crossbows... NOTHING! You punch him a few times and he goes down like a sack of rocks!? I just don't GET it!"

"There's some kind of magic at work here. if we could only-"

"DOWN, Paul!"

Paul and Jacob both dove in opposite directions as Corvair sent two fireballs at them.

Corvair stood up, grasped the bolt in his shoulder, and yanked it out. Jacob couldn't help but flinch as the tiny missile came free... taking a scrap of Corvair's flesh and a piece of the robe along with it. Corvair tossed the bolt aside and then placed his hand over the wound. When he removed his glowing fingers... the wound was cauterized.

"SIMPLETONS!!!" he roared at the other priests as waves of heat began to pour off of him. "CAN YOU DO NOTHING WITHOUT MY CONSTANT GUIDANCE!?!"

The archers began peppering Corvair with bolts from their crossbows, but it was no use. The missiles turned to ashes before they could reach him. He stomped his foot on the ground. Flames leapt up around the spot.. and then streaked off in three directions, snaking across the dirt like fiery tentacles.

The archers abandoned their assault and ran. They zigzagged across the street, but the flaming tendrils moved two quickly. Two archers were caught from behind before they reached safety... they were incinerated on the spot. The third archer made a running leap through a window. The flames followed him, setting the entire building on fire in the blink of an eye. An instant later, the archer rushed out the front door, covered head to toe in orange flames. Screaming like a banshee, he ran across the street... leaving flaming bootprints in his wake. He only made it a few yards before he collapsed and died.

Corvair raised his arms and rose into the air. At ten feet, he paused and pointed at Sheriff's Boylle and the other guardsman.

"RETREAT!" Boylle shouted.

Corvair gestured, and two plumes of flame leapt from his fingers.

"BEHIND ME!"

Boylle raised his dented shield as the flames hit. Hungry tongues of fire lapped at the metal, spilling around the edges as the metal barrier grew hot in the sheriff's's hands.

"NNNRRRRGGH!" Boylle held back his screams as the metal began to sear his flesh. He turned to the man behind him. "Run, boy..." he hissed.

The guardsman refused to abandon his sheriff's.

"I can't hold this damned thing forever! RUN, DAMN YOU! RUN!"

The reluctant guardsman ran for safety as, behind him, the flames melted Boylle's shield, turning it into a splash of red-hot liquid metal flying into Boylle's face.

"AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!"

"BOYLLE!!!" Jacob screamed. He charged toward the priests, but Paul grabbed his arm.

"Nothing we can do! We have to get out of here!"

"But the SHERIFF'S!!"

"He's DEAD!"

Hearing Jacob's shout, the other two fire priests turned toward them.

"Here it comes," said Paul.

The priests raised their hands... just as something roared over head.

"What the hell-?"

The sudden hissing, crackling, screeching sound rose to a frightening crescendo... an enormous thunderclap-

KRAAA-THOOOOOM!

A single bolt of lightning arced down from the heavens, transfixing Corvair in mid-air. The priest's body split the lightning-bolt like a prism... creating five more bolts that struck the other priests, knocking them off their feet and sending them flying back.

Corvair fell from the sky like a stone, landing in a heap... surrounded by scorched earth. He turned his eyes skyward to see what had hit him.

Gresham hung in the air above the street like a vengeful deity... holding a ball of lightning in his fist, with eyes glowing as bright as two suns. He pointed at Corvair with his empty hand.

"WHICH ONE!" he roared. The mage's voice shook the buildings... and the ground under Jacob's feet. "WHICH ONE OF YOU KILLED THE BOY!!!!"

"Ahhhh..." Corvair hissed, lips curling up into a smile. He got to his feet, then raised his arms and started to rise into the air once more.

Gresham hurled the ball of lightning at him.

KRA-BOOOOOM!!

"AAAIIIIIIIIIIIII-" Corvair screamed as he fell... hit the ground... bounced back into the air... then flew out of control... right into the inferno that was once the sheriff's's office.

The other two fire-priests immediately turned their power on Gresham, spraying him with fire.

Gresham just looked at the incoming flames... and the plumes of fire veered left and right, curling around and heading away from Gresham. They struck the rooftops of two buildings... which were immediately engulfed by fire.

The mage had dealt with their attack.... now it was HIS turn.

Gresham pointed at Zeadryl, and the fire-priest rose into the air... but not under his own power. Zeadryl looked around frantically as he came face-to-face with the crazed mage.

"Was it you!!?" Gresham sneered. "WAS IT YOU!?!"

"I-I-"

"ANSWER ME!!"

Gresham's eyes flashed brighter, and Zeadryl began to spin in the air... rotating like a top. He spun faster and faster... and faster...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" Zeadryl screamed. He was spinning so fast that it was impossible to tell one part of his body from another. He was just a red blur twirling in the air before Gresham. The fire priest reacted the only way he knew how...

Jets of spooled off of the priest's spinning body like a whirlwind. The flames were out of control, spinning off in all directions.

Everything around them that wasn't already aflame, was soon burning intensely. Gresham spun the priest even faster... the flame went farther... spraying out onto adjacent streets. Within seconds it was literally RAINING fire.

"GRESHAM!" Jacob shouted. "GRESHAM STOP!"

"YOU'RE DESTROYING EVERYTHING!" Paul added.

"YOU'RE SETTING THE TOWN ON FIRE!!! YOU'LL KILL US ALL!!"

Gresham didn't care. He clenched his fists. The priest spun faster still...

Balls of flame roared out of the sky like a hailstorm from the pits of hell.

"WAS IT YOU!!?!? Gresham roared. "ANSWER ME!!! WHO KILLED THE BOY!!! WAS IT YOU!!?!"

"He's LOST it!" said Paul. "Gresham's LOST HIS MIND! We have to get out of here!"

"NO!" Someone grabbed Jacob... Clevvoc. The iron-priest held Jacob by the shoulders,... his fingers sinking into Jacob's flesh.

"ARRRRGH! PAUL, HELP!"

"Tell the mage to stop!" Clevvoc hissed at Paul. There was fear in the priest's voice. Real fear. "Tell him to stop or I will tear this one in HALF!"

Clevvoc pulled Jacob's shoulders in opposite directions to illustrate his point.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!" Jacob screamed... his bones on the verge of snapping in the priest's grasp.

"I Can't!" Paul replied. "YOU killed his apprentice, and NOW he's out of control!! You drove him off the DEEP END!"

"TELL HIM TO ST-" Clevvoc stopped in mid-sentence. His eyes looked past Paul... to a building not far behind. The structure was on fire, seconds away from collapse. People were streaming out of the building and running down the street...

...one of them was a blonde woman, carrying a child.

"THEESA!" Paul shouted. "DAMN-"

Clevvoc released Jacob and pointed at the fleeing townspeople.

"SIMOX! BURN THEM!!!"

"NOOOO!!!" Paul shouted.

In the air above them, Gresham's looked down at Paul... then across at Theesa and the others running down the street with fire still raining from the sky. He frowned.

His attention snapped back to Zeadryl. Gresham's fists tightened, and the priest dropped from the sky. He didn't FALL.. his spinning body was DRIVEN straight down with incredible force. Had the priest been made of sterner stuff, he would have screwed into the ground like a corkscrew. But he was flesh and blood... and when that rapidly spinning flesh hit the ground, it exploded into a thousand unrecognizable chunks.

Even before the bloody shower had ended, Gresham pointed at Clevvoc-

"-IPE!!" The priest yelped as he was dragged, and then FLUNG away from Jacob. He collided with Simox before the fire-priest could torch the innocent civilians. Both priests slid a short distance... demolishing the side of a building, causing the wall to collapse on top of them.

Agram and Clyst... the remaining priests... looked at each other as the crazed mage stared down at them. Agram backed away-

An instant later, the pile of flaming wood lifted up and slid to one side... shrugged off by Clevvoc. One of the pieces of debris was a board that had been broken off at an angle, creating a sharp point. As he dug himself out, Clevvoc grabbed the board and hurled it like a spear at the mage... who's attention was directed at the others.

"LOOK OUT!" Jacob warned.

Gresham pointed at the board, and it stopped in mid-flight. It hovered in the air for a moment, then slowly rotated... turning 180-degrees to face the direction from which it had come.

Then it started moving again.

"Oh, no-" Clevvoc gasped. He left the unconscious Simox behind and started running. He didn't make it far. The spear impaled him from behind, then the sharp end stuck so deeply into the ground that Clevvoc couldn't even fall... his corpse was propped up on the wooden plank like an insect in a collector's case.

Suddenly there was an explosion. Fire and ash spewed from the remains of the sheriff's's station in volcanic fury. A single red-robed figure rose from amid the inferno like a phoenix. Corvair's robe was in tatters... and soaked with blood in several places... but his rage was healthy and unbroken. He rose quickly into the air, and all the fire and heat of the burning building followed him upward. Thick, tentacles of flame coiled around him, forming complex shapes around his outstretched limbs.

"ENOUGH!" He roared. He slammed his fists together in front of him, and a column of flame thirty feet in diameter surged forth. The end of the column swelled... then opened up in a giant fist that seized Gresham in its fiery grasp.

Paul and Jacob could feel the broiling heat of Corvair's attack. Even on the ground, it singed their hair and stung their skin. They had to turn their eyes away from it in order to keep their eyes from blistering.

"GRESHAAAMMM!"

"Time to go," said Paul. He grabbed Jacob by the arm and pulled him away, following the fleeing civilians. All around them the town was burning to the ground, and behind them, Corvair was bellowing in rage. The giant fist of flame squeezed tighter, then it flung the mage into the sheriff's's station just as Gresham had done to Corvair. The mage... his burning clothes trailing streams of flame behind him... struck the ground hard and became lost in smouldering debris.

"BRING ME HIS ASHES!" Corvair pointed at the sheriff's's office. Then he turned his attention to the fleeing crowd. They were far down the street now, heading for the edge of town. Corvair extended the palm of his hand toward them... fingers outstretched.

Streaks of fire erupted from his hand.

A dozen townspeople became piles of cinders.

"THEESA!"

"GET OUT OF THE STREET!" Jacob shouted to the crowd. "EVERYONE OUT OF THE STREET! TAKE COVER!"

Jacob and Paul caught up with Theesa near the center of the crowd.... just as the people began exploding behind them. Ash and chunks of sizzling bone rained down on the crowd as the destruction worked its way toward them. Paul grabbed Theesa's hand and pulled her out of the crowd. They ducked into an alley, and a wave of heat roared down the street where they'd just been... immolating everyone who hadn't been smart enough to take cover.

The buildings on either side of them were already ablaze. The air was so thick with soot and smoke that they couldn't breath. They continued on to the next street, and kept moving as fast as they could.... but the air wasn't much better. With the entire town on fire, every breath they took was a choking mix of smoke and heat.

"I told you to head for the STABLES!"

"When have I ever listened to you, Paul?"

"NOW would have been a good time to START!"

"I told you I wasn't leaving without you, and I meant it!"

"But you could have waited somewhere SAFE! Like the STABLES! You almost got yourself KILLED!!"

"Well if we don't leave now, we can all be killed together!" said Jacob. "In case you hadn't noticed, those people are still back there!"

"I saw Gresham-"

"He was kind of hard to miss," said Jacob. "He took a few of 'em out, but he torched the city in the process. Now he's down."

"Is he dead?"

"Probably," said Paul. "If he isn't... he will be when they get hold of him. But maybe dealing with him will keep them busy long enough for us to get the hell OUT of here! ...unless you have some problem with that, Theesa."

"I'm sorry if I love you too much to let you kill yourself," Theesa snapped.

"That's funny," said Paul. "I was about to say the same thing. But YOU-" Paul pointed to the baby Theesa cradled in her arms. "-have to take care of HIM. We have to keep him out of their hands no matter what. This isn't about what we want, Theesa. Next time I tell you to GO, you'd better damn well GO!!!"

"Hopefully it won't come to that," said Theesa. "We're together now... we're leaving-"

"If it DOES happen, you'll DO AS I SAY! If you won't do it for your husband, then you should consider yourself under ORDERS from a member of the TOWN GUARD!"

"You're not in the guard any more, Paul."

"DAMMIT, THEESA! You KNOW what I'm saying! I don't want to see you hurt! And if I have to... if I have to stay behind to make sure of that, then-"

The baby, who had been crying all along, began to choke on the smoke and ash rolling down the street.

"Please, Theesa," Paul pleaded. "Promise me!"

"Okay," she said reluctantly.

"Promise!"

"I promise I'll do what you say," she muttered.

On the other side of the street, a half-burnt building collapsed under its own weight. More smoke and glowing cinders billowed out into the air.

"Do you think they'll be anyone left to rebuild?" said Jacob.

"Yeah," said Paul. "Hopefully, us."

---

His legs were shattered. He could still feel them... but the only sensation he got was pain.

Gresham was trapped in a pile of debris, unable to move. Unfortunately, he wasn't paralyzed... so he felt every broken bone in his body... every inch of scorched flesh. His arms were pinned down, making any further acts of magic impossible. A broken beam from the rooftop lay across his chest, so couldn't even draw enough breath to scream. What little he could breath was so filled with smoke... he wondered if he would suffocate before he bled to death.

Hopefully he would pass out from the pain before either happened.

"...I'm sorry, Christopher..." he moaned. "...I tried..."

Gresham closed his eyes and wept for his friend.

He blacked out several times in the process... and once when he opened his eyes, he realized he wasn't alone.

"Shhhhh...." said Agram. The iron-priest reached down and shifted the heavy beam slightly so that Gresham could breath. But he didn't remove it. "I couldn't save the boy. But I can save you."

"Who are you-"

"You have him!" said another voice. Clyst, Simox, and Corvair were wandering around the edge of the debris.

"The mage still lives," Agram told Corvair. "But not for much longer. His injuries are severe... his suffering, great."

"Good," said Corvair.

"Shall I end his pain?" Agram reached for Gresham's head.

"No!" Corvair spat. "Let him die slowly. His suffering will cleanse him... he will know better than to oppose us in the next life. If he has one."

"But-" Agram began.

"LEAVE him!" ordered the fire-priest.

"As you wish."

Agram spared a quick glance at Gresham, then he turned and rejoined the others, leaving the mage to his pain.

"Are you satisfied, Corvair?" said Agram. "All of this death? This destruction? Are you happy now?"

"No," said Corvair. "Not yet. When the infant's ashes are filtering through my fingers...then, perhaps."

"But we've lost him," said Clyst. "Clevvoc was the only one who could track the magic. We don't know if the child is alive or dead. Or where they've taken him."

"We shouldn't have come," Simox added. "We shouldn't have come here ourselves. We should have sent emissaries. The psionicists-"

"We could not trust mercenaries with this," said Corvair. "This is far, far too important."

"But we weren't prepared for this! Zeadryl and Clevvoc are dead! This was supposed to be EASY!"

"We risk much by exposing ourselves like this," said Clyst.

"I would expect such whining from Agram," said Corvair. "Not from you, Simox... and certainly not from you, Clyst."

"I am merely stating the truth," said Clyst. "We have always worked in the shadows... acting through agents and emissaries. Yet we have now exposed ourselves to this entire town-"

"A town which will very shortly be no more," Corvair replied. "When we have the child... I will destroy this place and everything in it. And I shall take great pleasure in doing so."

"WHEN we have the child!" said Simox. "We don't know where it is. We have no way to find it without Clevvoc!"

"I know where it is," said Agram. "I heard its protectors mention the stables."

The other priests looked at him.

"You come forth with this information NOW?!" Corvair hissed. "You should have-"

"WE should not have come in the first place!" Agram snapped. "You should not have killed the boy... or the old woman... or the blacksmith... or ANY of these people! I could have retrieved the child MYSELF... ALONE... without ANY of this carnage! So, as far as what SHOULD have been done, we are MORE than even!"

"Ahhh... the weakling grows some semblance of a spine," said Corvair. "Perhaps this means you are on the verge of becoming useful. We will have words when this is done, Agram."

"I look forward to it."

"And again, we still don't know where the child is!" said Simox.

"I told you-"

"But where ARE the stables!?!? We don't know!"

Corvair pointed to a group of townspeople huddling in an alley not far away... watching their houses burn.

"I believe we shall find out very shortly."

Corvair smiled.

---

The town guard's stable sat on an old farm near the edge of town. The fire hadn't reached that far yet, but the smoke was still thick in the air. Standing in front of the barn, Theesa could see most of the town. The center of it was burning so intensely that it was almost like a sunrise. The smoke from the blaze obscured the stars under a blanket of dark gray.

"Here." Paul handed her an old rag, soaked in water from the nearby well. "Tie this around your nose and mouth. It'll help filter out the smoke. Here's one for the baby."

"I really loved this town," Theesa sighed. "I wasn't born here like everyone else... but it was still home. Do you think our house is gone, Paul?"

"Probably," Paul grunted. "Come back inside, we don't want to be seen."

Theesa stepped inside, and Paul closed the massive doors behind her, sealing them in.

Inside, Jacob had just finished putting saddles on three horses. He was trying to secure the baby's basket on the back of Theesa's horse. Theesa could ride, but she couldn't hold a baby and control a horse at the same time. Not at the speed they were likely to be going.

"Get some sandbags and blankets," said Paul. "Tie them to the other horses so it looks like we're ALL carrying a child. "If they catch us, they won't know which horse to take down first."

Jacob nodded.

The stable had a small cache of weapons... Two shortswords, a useless wooden shield, and two ancient, rusty crossbows. While Jacob worked with the horses, Paul checked the bows. The bolts were old and rusty, but they would still kill.

"These just need a little sharpening," said Paul. There was a sharpening stone with the supplies. "If we can take down those two in red, we can just outrun the others," he said as he sharpened the metal points on the bolts. "If it comes to that."

"Yeah," said Jacob. "But we'll have to take 'em by surprise. Otherwise...." Jacob shook his head. "I just wanna know how to kill those others without getting close enough for one of 'em to twist my head off."

"They don't fight well," said Paul.

"Yeah, but they're strong as hell. And swords don't work on 'em. Arrows, either."

Paul nodded as he continued sharpening. He stopped suddenly.

"What is it, Paul?" said Theesa.

Paul held a bolt up to his eyes and squinted at it.

"What?"

"...Gresham..." Paul muttered. "Did you see when he killed them? The second one..."

"I'm afraid I wasn't looking," said Theesa. "I was trying not to get burned alive."

"That crazy bastard. I don't know if he figured it out... or maybe it was just luck..."

"What are you talking about?"

Paul took his knife and began cutting the metal tips off of the bolts.

"Hey, you're ruining 'em!" Jacob protested.

"No, I'm not." When he'd taken the tips off of half of them, he began carving the shafts down to points. "Metal," he said. "METAL won't hurt them. But fists... and feet..."

"And wood!" Jacob smiled. "I think you got it!"

"I sure as hell hope so. And even so, this might be easier if we split up."

"Paul-"

"No, Theesa... don't start. If we split up, we ALL have a better chance of making it out of here. We can meet up at the next town, and then... hell, I don't even know where we're going from there. If they follow us, we'll need to find someone with some serious magic to protect us."

"Bahn-Mohr," Jacob suggested. "Gresham was trying to think of some people who could help. He mentioned someone in Bahn-Mohr."

"Do you realize what's between us and Bahn-Mohr?" said Paul. "It'll take weeks to get around the Warlord's kingdom... through the swamps."

"So what then?" said Jacob.

"So... we'll need to stop and get more supplies-"

"Paul, what's this?"

"Eh?"

There was a scrap of red cloth sticking out of Paul's pocket. It was wet.

"A piece of their leader's robe," said Paul. "From when he was hit with the bow. I grabbed it; I thought that... when we were safe...you could..."

"Give it here," Theesa held out her hand.

"Are you sure. You're likely to see some unpleasant-"

"I've seen more than enough already, and I'm still standing. What's a little more going to hurt? Give it."

Paul took the fragment of blood-soaked robe and handed it to Theesa.

"You might want to sit down-"

"I'm not going to break, Paul. You just get us ready to go."

Theesa closed her eyes and ran her fingers across the cloth. It was coarse... uncomfortable against her skin. It made her mind itch.

Theesa opened her awareness, and the images flooded in. At first there was nothing but fire. Heat. Anger. She caught glimpses of people she knew... Yestra. Christopher.

She saw how they died.

Theesa whimpered and blinked back the tears. She pulled back for a moment to harden her emotions against what the cloth was showing her. When she was ready, she plunged ahead... deeper into the cloth's past...

She saw Cole. She saw him die in his own furnace. She saw more flames... and something beyond them. Something on the other side of the fire...

There was darkness.

At first, Theesa thought the visions had ended, but then the sensations assaulted her with a sudden rush. She held her consciousness still... waited for the images to settle...

It was a dark place. Dark and horrible. It was hot.

It looked like a dungeon of some kind, but there were no cells... just open rooms on either side of a spiraling corridor.

Everything was made of iron.

The floor.... the walls... everything.

Flames jutted from the walls at irregular intervals to light the way. There weren't any torches or lamps... just raw fire spewing from tiny holes near the ceiling.

Theesa was seeing these things through the eyes of whoever had worn the cloth. She wanted to look around and explore, but she could only go where he went... see what he saw. Hear what he heard.

There was a slow, rhythmic pounding... both a sound AND a vibration in the walls. It was like the ticking of some gigantic clock.

Or a heartbeat. A monstrous heartbeat.

Theesa moved down the corridor, following the spiral deeper into whatever structure she was in. She passed several rooms where men in red or blue-gray robes were assembled. They appeared to be praying. Praying to WHAT, Theesa didn't care to imagine.

She went deeper. The temperature rose the further down she went... and it was very, very hot. She entered one of the rooms; it was very large... and empty. Row after row of iron benches stretched before her. There was something odd about the way they were arranged... if there was a pattern to their placement, it eluded Theesa entirely. To her, it looked as if they'd just been thrown into the room at random and allowed to stay wherever they landed.

She made her way through the maze of benches to the far wall. She reached out and touched the rough iron. It was HOT!

Theesa gasped... the pain was gone in and instant... and so was the wall! A section of it slid away, revealing a set of iron steps leading down into darkness. There were no fires to light her way, but she started down without hesitation. The wall slid back into place behind her. As she descended, she began to see a strange glow from below her. Not red, like a flame... but a curious shade of blue. Whatever the light was, it made Theesa afraid. She didn't want to see it... but the person who's eyes she was looking through kept doing down... moving closer.

He was afraid, too. Theesa could feel the fear, like a fist-sized tumor in her gut.

The stairs emptied into a circular chamber, somewhere deep inside... or underneath... the iron structure where the 'priests' lived. The iron floor circled a large pit... out of which the eerie blue light radiated.

She stopped and knelt before the pit.

No words were said... no prayers spoken, no offering made...

She/he merely waited patiently. The wait was short.

The blue light pulsed brighter, and something rose out of the pit.

Theesa couldn't begin to describe its shape... her 'borrowed' eyes never looked directly at it, so she saw it only from the edges of his vision. What she DID see looked like a massive black throne... a throne that defied the very CONCEPT of a shape. The blue light was radiating from it... parts of the throne may have actually been blue, but Theesa couldn't tell.

That there was something sitting on the throne, Theesa was certain. But either she couldn't see it, or her eyes couldn't comprehend what she saw.

"I felt your summons, my lord." The priest said, still on his knees with his head bowed.

The thing on the throne spoke. Its words were sounds that Theesa couldn't understand... but it also spoke directly into Corvair's mind. Its thoughts were like jagged knives slicing her brain from within... horrible...

"I would speak of the prophecies, Corvair," it said. "I have learned much since last I summoned you."

"I... I am ready to receive your blessings, my lord."

"So you say. But be warned that what I speak is not to be shared with the others."

"My lord? I thought-"

"What I speak is only for those who follow. Those who have bound themselves to me. They, and they alone, are to know what I tell you now."

"Y-yes, my lord." Corvair lowered his head even further... further prostrating himself before the thing.

"Know that at the end times, there will be mortals who will fight against the Lords of Order at the time of the Cleansing. Their battle shall cause upheavals that have not been seen since the birth of Creation itself..."

The dark thing's words trailed off. Corvair couldn't tell if it had finished speaking, or if it was merely choosing the words for its next revelation.

"My lord," Corvair said cautiously "We already know of these things. The ancient prophecies-"

"Are vague and incomplete. Their true meaning shrouded in ignorance. I now complete them.... I now give my servants what must be known if we are to transcend the Cleansing... if we are to pass into the new Creation that follows. Know that the end-times will bring upheavals... and these upheavals will bring to us fragments of what may be. Pieces of history yet to come. These fragments will weave themselves into the tapestry of events that precede the Cleansing."

"I... I'm not sure I understand, my lord."

"Understanding is unnecessary. Know only that what comes to us from the future may be used to affect that future... to change what comes... to allow us to escape that fate that has been preordained."

"How, my lord?"

"Such things cannot be comprehended by minds as ephemeral as yours," said the creature on the throne. "I will give you only what you must do to ensure our survival."

"Yes, my lord."

"A child will fall from the future. I know not from when... or to when. I know only the place, and that the child has not yet come. You will plant an emissary in this place, to await the child's arrival. Know that this child's role in history... if left unaltered... will bring about our destruction. You will destroy this child, Corvair. Destroy him, and our transcendence is almost assured. Fail... and the consequences for your soul will be most dire."

"We will not fail, my lord."

"The child's time will be short," said the thing. "See that it is slain before he is taken once more by the upheavals... and cast to his TRUE place."

"TRUE place, My lord?"

"I speak of things you need not know...." The monstrous throne began to sink once more into the pit. The creature continued to speak as it descended. "When the child appears, you must act quickly. Destroy all who oppose you. And do not fail, Corvair."

"No, my lord," said Corvair. "I will not fail."

Corvair glanced up as the last of the throne vanished... catching a fleeting glimpse of the creature to which he'd been speaking-

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" Theesa screamed, her mind reeling at the image captured by Corvair's eyes. The shape of it... the hideous, incomprehensible SHAPE!!

Theesa's eyes snapped open as the vision ended. Her own convulsing muscles threw her backward... into Paul's arms. He held her still... keeping her limbs from flailing until the horror-induced seizure subsided.

"Theesa! THEESA! Calm down! Shhhh... you're back, baby... you're back here with me, now... it's over... calm down... shhh..."

"Paul! It was... it was HIDEOUS! It... it wasn't HUMAN! Not even CLOSE to human! It couldn't... it couldn't have been REAL, Paul... it just COULDN'T! There's just no WAY!"

"It's okay, Theesa... just quiet down now. Quiet down and tell me what you saw."

"Maybe you should let her rest a minute, Paul," said Jacob.

"We don't have a minute. If she's learned something-"

"I saw this thing..." Theesa said between gasps of air. "I saw this thing, and it was talking to a man... and it told him about a prophecy where if they didn't kill this child, they wouldn't survive some kind of upheaval. Something about the end of the world, and how the child was going to destroy them."

"That's what Gresham said," said Jacob. "He said something about the end of the world, didn't he, Theesa?"

"Yes!"

"So did their leader," Paul added. "The one I got the cloth from. He mentioned the 'end-times.'"

"They're some kind of cult," said Theesa. "They worship this... this THING... in a pit at the bottom of some huge, iron fortress. It told them to come and kill the baby, and destroy anyone that got in their way."

"That would be us."

"They probably think they're either causing or preventing the end of the world. Religious fanatics... PTUI!" Paul spat on the ground. "Let's all rush out and KILL people for the gods! Eternal life through slaughtering innocents! Bah!"

"This was no god I saw," said Theesa.

"Demon, then?"

"This was worse, Jacob... this was worse..."

"Jacob, are we ready?"

"As ready as we're gonna get."

"Saddle up," Paul ordered. Theesa walked over to her horse, where Paul helped her into the saddle and secured the child's basket behind her. He then grabbed his crossbow and mounted his own horse.

"I'll get the door."

Jacob put one hand on each of the stable doors and shoved. The huge wooden doors started to swing open... but then one of them suddenly slammed closed, knocking Jacob back a step.

"Wha-"

CRASH!

A hand smashed through the wood and grabbed Jacob by the shoulder-

-crack-

Theesa could hear the bones cracking from across the stable. Jacob's eyes widened in shock and pain... but before he could even scream, the hand yanked him head-first through the door... using Jacob as a human battering ram. The door snapped, as did many of the bones in the Jacob's upper body.

"JACOB!"

Jacob's feet hung inches from the ground as Clyst held him up by the neck. Blood streamed out of the massive gash in Jacob's skull... but he was still alive. The iron-priest's fist tightened around the guardsman's throat.

"Nooooo!" Theesa screamed.

"Theesa, GO!"

On the horse beside her, Paul drew his sword and swatted Jacob's horse with the flat of the blade. The horse charged toward the door as Paul took aim with the crossbow. Clyst looked up at the horse. Paul fired-

wzzzzz-THWUCK!

The sharpened wooden shaft... devoid of its metal tip... sank into the center of Clyst's forehead, piercing his brain and pinning his hood to his surprised face. Jacob and the priest both fell backward as the riderless horse shot past them...

FWOOOOMM!

Fire poured forth from the left and right, instantly engulfing the beast. The horse reared up on its hind legs, screaming as the two fire-priests broiled it alive.

"We can't get out that way!" Theesa shouted. "There's no other way out! We're TRAPPED!"

Just then, something powerful struck the rear wall of the stable. A huge section of the wall collapsed inward, creating a new exit. But another iron priest stood waiting outside... fists still clenched from the punch that had demolished the wall. Paul already had his crossbow loaded. He took aim, but Agram leapt back away from the opening before Paul could fire.

"GOOO!" Paul shouted.

Theesa glanced back at the baby secured in the basket behind her, then she kicked her mare's sides and snapped the reigns. The horse surged forward, with Paul's mount right behind her. The two riders exploded out of the stable just as Corvair sent a column of fire through the building... igniting the entire structure instantly.

"SPLIT UP! I'LL BUY YOU TIME!"

"BE CAREFUL, PAUL!"

"I LOVE YOU, THEESA!"

"PAUULLL!"

Paul's horse veered away from Theesa's... hers continued toward the safety of the woods, while doubled back toward the flaming barn.

"AGRAM, YOU FOOL!!" Corvair growled. "YOU LET THEM ESCAPE! SIMOX!! GET THEM!!"

The fire-priest rose into the air and floated over the burning stable. Simox pointed at the fleeing horses... his fingertip glowed... and produced two thin streams of flame, each arcing toward a different rider.

wzzz-thwwuck!

A speeding bolt pierced Simox's spine, sending the priest AND his fire spiraling wildly out of the sky. Jacob had had just enough strength in his body to launch the already-loaded bow... but not enough to escape Corvair's wrath.

"DAMN YOU!" the priest roared as Simox's body hit the ground and exploded... releasing a brief, but brilliant fountain of flame. Corvair reached down and grabbed Jacob by the throat.

"AAAAARRRRRGGGHH!!!" The skin of Jacob's face blackened and peeled away from his skull as Corvair incinerated him. But Jacob's dying scream masked the thundering hooves of Paul's mount

tha-da-dump!
Tha-Da-Dump!
THA-DA-DUMP!

Corvair looked up just in time to see Paul's sword glinting in the light of the burning stable. The priest twisted away and raised his hand-

SHWA-CHUNK!

"AAAAAIIIIIIIIIIII!!!"

The lower half of Corvair's left arm dropped to the ground.... along with Paul's sword. The single instant of contact had left the metal weapon glowing red hot. The palm of Paul's hand was still sizzling.

"DIEEE!!!" Corvair thrust his remaining hand toward Paul. His palm glowed and spat forth a tremendous ball of flame.

"YAA!" Paul yanked back no his reigns.... but the horse needed no such encouragement. The beast took off, trying frantically to outrun the fireball.

The fireball was faster.

Paul felt its heat on his back as he steered the horse toward the trees.

The fireball veered to follow him! It was TOO FAST! He managed to turn the frantic animal again... this time headed AWAY from the trees.... toward the one safe place he could think of.

Paul glanced back and saw nothing but flames behind him. The horse's tail was on fire... and so was his own hair!

"YARRRRGH!" Paul found his target. The darkness of the well was like a bullseye, and Paul launched himself from the speeding horse like an arrow. He was still in mid-leap when the flames overtook him AND his steed... overwhelming his senses with bright, searing pain the color of the sun...

"PAUL!" Theesa felt her stomach clench with dread. She was almost to the trees... almost to safety. If she could only get out of their sight, there was a good chance that she would live to see another day. She was almost there... but when she looked behind her and saw Paul's steed being eaten by Corvair's flames, her world died.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Every ounce of strength drained out of her as the tears tore themselves from her stinging eyes. For an instant she was as limp as a doll, but she managed to turn away and keep moving... not for her own safety, but because she simply couldn't bear to keep looking back.

But she could still hear.

She could still hear the horse's dying cries... and Corvair's insane shouting. Had she looked a second time, she would have seen Agram take up Paul's discarded sword and point it at her back. She would have seen him adjust his aim, and draw back his arm to throw.

Theesa heard a sound as the blade tumbled end-over-end like a thrown dagger...

whoosh-Whoosh-WHOOSH!
CHUNK!

The horse went rigid beneath her. Then it reared up on its hind legs, dislodging Theesa from the saddle. She hit the ground an instant before the horse collapsed... with a sword protruding from its flank. The animal landed a foot in front of her, pinning her lower legs under its side.

The baby... crying furiously... tumbled from its basket. The numerous layers of blankets kept the child's head from cracking open on the rocks, but the child screamed bloody murder nonetheless. Theesa reached for the baby, but he lay just out of reach. She tried to pull her legs free, but got only jolts of pain in the process. The horse was still half-alive... still convulsing as it died... and each movement threatened to break Theesa's legs beneath its considerable weight.

She tried again to reach the child... but it had grown no closer since the last time. Theesa sat up and looked over the horse's flank to see two figures approaching.

The priests.

No longer able to levitate, Corvair was limping along with his hand clutching the blackened stump where his other arm used to be. Seemingly oblivious to the pain, he'd cauterized his own wound to stop the bleeding. Smoke still rose from the burnt flesh as he came for her.

A few yards in front of him was the other priest. Theesa didn't know his name, but she knew what he was. Death. He'd kill her and the baby just as surely as they'd killed everyone else. And Corvair would leave their smouldering ashes right here in the grass.

Theesa turned her eyes to the trees... searching for help.

"HELP US!" she yelled. "SOMEBODY HELP US, PLEASE!"

The priest kept coming... unconcerned with her cries.

"HELLLP!!! GRESHAM! JACOB! OH, GODS, PLEEEASE HELP USS!"

But there was no one left. Paul was dead. Jacob and Gresham. The town guard. Even Yestra and poor, poor Christopher.

They were all dead.

Murdered by the same monsters that were now coming for her.

"HELLLLLLLLLPPPPP!!!"

Her cries degenerated into hysterical sobs as the fear tightened its grip on her. She pulled and pulled... but her legs would not come free. She scratched at the grass, on the inconceivable notion that she could somehow DIG her way out. Failing that, she stretched... and tried... to reach... the baby...

A shadow fell over her, and she saw the iron priest walking around the rear of the dead horse.

"NO!" Theesa shouted at him, as if the sound of her voice held some power that could stop his murderous intent. "NO! LEAVE US ALONE! LEAVE THE BABY ALONE!"

But her voice had no power. He kept coming.

And she kept shouting.

"HE'S JUST A BABY! YOU MONSTERS!! YOU MONSTERS, HOW CAN YOU KILL A BABY!!!? HOW!?!!?"

The priest walked over to where the infant lay... and kept walking. He stepped OVER the crying child and approached Theesa.

He reached down. And Theesa cried out... not for help, but for the comfort of knowing she would be with him soon-

"PAULLLLL!"

The priest grabbed the horse along the spin... and lifted the heavy animal up just enough for Theesa to snatch her legs out from under it. Trembling, she stared up at the man who was supposed to kill her... but had instead freed her.

"Can you run?" said the priest.

Theesa couldn't answer. Her legs were numb. She couldn't stand, let alone move... but her mind refused to form the words to reply.

"If you can," the priest continued. "Do so now."

Theesa snapped out of her shock. She threw herself to the side... arms outstretched toward the baby.

The priest stepped in front of her.

"Leave the child," he commanded. "He is not for you."

"No! I won't let you kill him! NO!"

"Leave NOW!" Agram ordered. "Before-"

"WE HAVE IT!" Corvair hissed. The crippled priest hobbled closer to the horse. He reeked of blood and smoke, and his breaths came in short, ragged gasps. But his injuries could not wipe the toothy grin of insane, almost giddy glee as he glared down at the crying infant. "The child of destiny is OURS!"

"But at what cost, Corvair?" said Agram.

"Cost? There IS no cost! The child must DIE, as must all who stand in our way!"

"And those who did NOT stand in our way?" the iron-priest retorted as he gazed out at the burning town. "What of them?"

"Their deaths are sacrifices to the new order... an order that demands one FINAL sacrifice..." Corvair pointed one quivering finger at the child. The air around his hand began to shimmer.

Agram stepped in front of him, moving between Corvair and the baby.

"MOVE!" Corvair spat.

"No."

"What mutiny is this!"

"You have gone too far," said Agram. "Much too far." Down near his feet, Theesa tried to move past him as quietly as possible. The feeling was slowing returning to her legs... too slowly. She couldn't stand, but she could still crawl. If she could just reach the child without the others seeing her-

"Give me the child!" Corvair demanded.

"No. Your thirst for blood and carnage have proven that you no longer serve the Balance-"

"GIVE IT TO ME!" Corvair's hand curled into a fist. Waves of heat began to roll off of his tight fingers. "Step aside and let me have it!!"

"No."

"LET ME HAVE IT!!!"

Agram stared into the shadow that hid was Corvair's face... and then stepped aside.

"Very well," he said. "Take it."

As Corvair's mouth opened to shout in triumph, Agram turned and grabbed the hilt of Paul's . In one quick motion, he snatched the blade free of the animal's flank and swung it with all of his considerable strength. The heat from Corvair's body melted the iron blade as it passed through his flesh. Melted iron sizzled down the fire-priest's chest... and Corvair's head toppled from his neck like a bag of bloody sand.

-thump-

The severed head hit the ground near the horse's tail. A fountain a fire and blood erupted from the neck... a display of fury that ended not with an explosion, but in a slow, pitiful spurting as the headless body sank first to its knees... and then collapsed on top of the head that had once crowned it.

Corvair's legs were still twitching when Theesa snatched the baby from the ground and staggered to her feet. Agram turned and grabbed her. Theesa pulled away, but the priest's grip was like a vice clamped onto her shoulder. Her knee was already on its way to his groin when he squeezed.

The bones in her shoulder didn't break... but the pain forced her knees before the iron-priest.

"I am sorry," said Agram. "But the child cannot go with you."

"Noo..." Theesa moaned through tears of pain. "No, I won't let you kill him!"

"I don't want to kill him," said Agram. "If that were so, then I would have let Corvair have his way before I slew him. You and the child have nothing to fear from me... but he cannot remain with you. I cannot allow that any more than I could allow the others to destroy him."

"You lie!"

Corvair released her shoulder. Theesa gasped at the pain's sudden end.

She scrambled to her feet and... went nowhere. The iron-priest reached up and pulled his hood back, revealing his face to her. Theesa gasped. The man's face was a quilt of scars... deep cuts and burns that must have gone to the bone when they were made. In truth, he no longer HAD a face. All traces of it had been obliterated by the systematic torture of his flesh... and replaced with layer upon layer of twisted scars. All that remained were his eyes... dark and weary, yet intense.

Theesa didn't think she had any more tears left in her. But when she saw what the stranger had hidden beneath his hood...

"My name is Agram," said the priest. "I serve the Balance."

"...your face..." Theesa gasped as she backed away from him.

"The Balance cannot be served by those who cling to the things of the world. Gold. Treasures. Identity. All must be cut and burned away before one is worthy of service. But fear not... I mean you and the child no harm."

"Who are you?"

"As I said, my name-"

"No! Who ARE YOU!? WHY did you come here! Why did you kill..." The sudden remembrance that Paul was dead chocked off the rest of her sentence. She'd almost forgotten. For a second, she thought that he would come riding up to save her... to take her back to a home that was probably just ashes now. Just like Paul. The sorrow hit her like a fist. Her strength drained into the ground... if it weren't for the baby in her arms, she would have simply collapsed.

"...why?..." she sobbed.

"We serve the Balance," Agram said calmly as he stepped closer. "Order and Chaos. Iron and Fire. As in all things, there must be a balance between-"

"What RIGHT does your religion give you to...to SLAUGHTER people!"

"I have killed no one... save for Corvair, who was a heretic and a traitor to the Order. His death was necessary-"

"But you just STOOD by and LET them kill every one I love! Then you save ME!? What... am I supposed to call you a HERO now!? You're just as evil as the others!"

"Order and Chaos transcend the lesser concepts of good and evil," said Agram. "Order is not always good... and chaos, not always evil. We do what we must without the tethers of such judgment."

"MURDERER!" Theesa screamed. "There! THERE is your JUDGMENT: MURDERER!!! The only way you're going to get this child is if you PRY him from my dead hands!"

"The child doesn't belong with you. You cannot protect him. Corvair abandoned the Balance and chose to serve a dark god... but he was not the ONLY one to do so. There have been many before him... and there will be many after. Others will come for the child. And the Order will not again be able to plant a traitor in their midst as they did with me. When they come a second time, if the child is not protected, he will die... and the cost to the Balance will be most dire."

"And you expect me to believe you? You want me to think that you'll PROTECT the child that you've destroyed an entire city to find?"

"With my very life," said Agram. "The Abomination that Corvair served knows much of the future... but the Order knows more. We know of the child's TRUE importance. We know from whence he came.... We know where he will go.... what he is destined to do. Soon, the echoes of the great upheaval will cast him adrift in time once more. Until then, he must be protected at the expense of all else... even other lives. That is why I was sent: to ensure his safety. And yours."

"M-mine?"

"Your fates are intertwined," said Agram. He moved forward again... getting closer. "Yours and the child's. But not here. Not now. This-" Agram pointed to the child. "-should not be. You have your own destiny to fulfill... a destiny that will not occur if you keep the child... or if the child dies in your care."

"I'll protect him!"

"As you have protected him thus far?" said Agram.

"I'm not giving him to you!"

"You have no choice."

"Yes, I do!" Theesa turned and ran for the trees... but she'd taken no more than two steps when a wave of nausea surged over her. She suddenly had no strength... no sense of balance...

Theesa dropped to her knees and just barely managed to keep from dropping the child. But when the nausea got worse, she had no choice but to let the baby go. She placed him on the ground in front of her and leaned to one side... emptying her stomach into the grass. Wave after wave of painful nausea continued to pummeled her... threatening to push her into unconsciousness.

She heard... no... she FELT Agram walking around to stand less than a foot in front of her. His hand was extended ... palm facing toward her. Every time she tried to look up at him, she literally became too nauseous to see.

"Corvair's power was great, because he was a Priest of Fire," said Agram. "But mine is greater. I am a HIGH Priest... of Iron. Of the iron that flows in your blood even now."

"...no..." Theesa moaned as her stomach continued to heave. "...no... please..."

"I cannot let you take the child," Agram said calmly.

Theesa reached for the baby, but she couldn't even SEE it. The world was spinning so rapidly around her that she couldn't even tell where she was anymore.

"...let us go..." she said.

"You WILL go," said Agram. "You will BOTH go... only separately."

Suddenly, the nausea ended. Theesa lay flat on the ground, unaware that she had even collapsed. She looked up and saw Agram holding the baby. The child had finally stopped crying.

"I am sorry," said Agram. "Corvair's god knows of the child's importance... but does not yet know of yours. For that reason, you are safe... for a time. But soon-"

"GO TO HELL!" Theesa spat.

Agram reached into his robe and pulled out a small metal disk slightly larger than a coin. It was engraved with symbols on both sides.

"I am sorry... but there is one more thing I must do."

Agram reached down toward Theesa's head with the metal disk held between his fingers. Theesa tried to crawl away, but her legs weren't working. She was too weak. It was all she could do to reach out and grab Agram's wrist. She tried to force his hand back, but it just kept coming...

"The memory of the child and my presence here must be erased," said Agram. "This magic was stolen from the heretics... it now serves the Balance. It will bring a new order to your mind... an order in which the baby did not appear, and the events that followed did not occur."

"No! No, don't take my memories!"

"The new ones will be much more pleasant-"

"No, I WANT to remember!"

"I cannot allow it. The memories would affect your destiny, and damage the Balance."

"The baby! At least tell me who's it is! Tell me where he came from!"

"You will know soon enough," said Agram. "But by then, it will be too late to stop it."

"Stop wh-"

The coin touched Theesa's forehead, and her mind froze. The thousand thoughts and emotions that were running through here all stopped dead. Theesa was outside of her own thoughts...looking down at them... looking at the events that had lead her to where she was.

Then the cracks began to appear.

Tiny, at first, they quickly grew to great chasms in her mind... shattering her memories from the top down... from the most recent all the way back to the moment she awoke that morning... and beyond. The destruction continued down... down... further into her past... completely scattering some portions of her life, while leaving other parts untouched. She tried to stop it. She tried to assert her will... but there was nothing her mind could do against the priest's magic.

She watched as her memories were torn down... and then gave a silent, mental gasp as the fragments began to reassemble. Shards and slivers of her life flew around her in a whirlwind, falling back into place much as they had been before... but different. The variations were insidiously subtle... an image shifted... a conversation re-arranged... events erased and reconstructed. The rush of thoughts came so fast that it was impossible for Theesa to grab hold of any single one... impossible to tell what had changed from what had remained untouched. She couldn't focus... she couldn't resist...
and, as the last of the memories came together they triggered a sudden reverberation through her mind, blasting her out of consciousness and into...

...something else...

Theesa remembered this place.

From a dream or a nightmare... or a vision... she couldn't tell. But she had been to this place before.

The purple and red sky roiled like an angry sea above her. The ground thundered with the footsteps of things running past... rushing toward the light lifting from the horizon before her. Their inhuman forms pushed... shoved... jostled... and screamed as the tendrils of light lashed out.

Theesa turned to look behind her. She gasped. Just as there was light on the horizon before her, on the opposite horizon rose an abysmal darkness. A darkness out of which the massive footsteps of something terrible could be heard.

Soon, the ground shook not with the people rushing to their deaths... but with the booming march of the thing in the darkness.

Something flashed beside her. Theesa turned just in time to see a figure... it wasn't human, but it looked female... vanish into the light. Theesa gasped. This wasn't right. The woman-thing wasn't burned or incinerated... she simply vanished. Theesa looked around her and saw that they were ALL vanishing... that what she at first thought was mass-destruction was instead...

...an evacuation!

The light... the portal on the horizon... was taking them to safety.

"WHAT'S GOING ON!" Theesa screamed. She couldn't even hear her own voice... and neither could the others. They all surged forward like tide of alien flesh, fleeing the thing behind them.

But what was it?

Behind her, the darkness bulged outward and gave birth to a mountain carved into the shape of a man. The figure was clad from head to toe in bulging silver and black armor. On its gleaming chestplate was emblazoned a symbol: A massive black emblem that seemed to suck in all of the light around it. The horned helmet curved around to cover the man's face, leaving only a "T" shaped slit for the eyes... but Theesa could see no eyes within it. Only darkness. Tendrils of darkness trailed behind the figure like smoke as he marched... a tremendous, fearsome thing. So large was he that the ground could not sustain him. Glowing fissures radiated from his footsteps, each step shattering the rocky earth down to the lava that flowed beneath.

Then, suddenly the sky split. There was an incredible wind... thunder and lighting rained down as the purple and red sky was torn asunder. There was a single shape behind it... a sphere of a color Theesa couldn't describe stretching from one horizon to the other... so massive that Theesa couldn't comprehend of its true size or distance... but it was getting closer. It dwarfed the armored man, and it radiated power like a gigantic sun. Everything around Theesa began to crumble... the light on the horizon winked out, leaving the remainder of he refugees stranded at their doom... at the end of their world.

The armored man paused in his march and turned his face to the thing in the sky. His fists clenched and the eye-slit in helmet began to glow.

Above them both, the giant sphere turned transparent, revealing the thing that lay coiled within it. Its eyes glowed as well... not with anger or rage, but with sheer, indescribable power.

Surely the armored giant did not intend to FIGHT this thing!

"RUN!" Theesa shouted... not knowing why she was warning this creature... or how she ever expected him to hear her voice.

But he did.

He turned briefly towards her. Theesa couldn't see the man's face... but there was something there. Some force... some connection. Though the man's face was hidden from her eyes... her heart told her that his eyes were fixed up on her.

The man looked at her for an instant, then turned away.

Theesa felt the power building up in the air around her as the two behemoths prepared to do battle. But she was not to witness it.

There was a flash... and sudden movement, as if she were being carried away. The two giants faded into the distance, as light and energy closed in around her, rapidly turning every sight, sound, though and sensation to a uniform shade of empty blankness.

And soon, that too, was gone.

---

Montfort... four years later...

"Excuse me, ma'am!"

"Oh!" Theesa yelped. Even though she in a crowded trader's square surrounded by people, the trader's sudden shout for her attention came as a surprise. She had already walked past his cart.... a small but well-built stand crammed with wood-carvings. She turned back and looked at the man who'd beckoned her... his voice still echoing in her ears. She started to ask the man what he wanted... but that would have been a ridiculous question. He was a trader. He wanted her to buy something. Unfortunately, she was running late.

"Not now," she said with a polite smile. "I'm almost late to meet someone-"

"Perhaps you should take them a gift!" the shopkeeper said with an equally polite smile. He held up a small trinket.

"Oh, he wouldn't like that-"

"Ah, a gift more suited for a man! Tell me... is he the adventurous type?"

"Well..."

The shopkeeper took something from under the table. It was a knife... a small dagger carved completely out of wood. He removed the wooden blade from its leather sheath and displayed its craftsmanship. The polished wood gleamed in the noon sun. Theesa didn't know much about knives... other than the kitchen variety... but it did look very nice.

"My, that is nice," Theesa said, stepping closer to the cart. She glanced cautiously at the alley behind the storekeeper, but, seeing nothing suspicious in the shadows there, she returned her attention to the blade.

"And functional, too," said the man. "An edge as sharp as any metal knife. Balanced for throwing, too! Do you like it?"

"Yes, it's beautiful! I know someone who would love something like this. Several people, actually..."

"Buy it for your friend!"

"Well... perhaps later. I really must be going. Will you be here later?

"Perhaps," The man shrugged. "Or you can just buy it now!"

"Mmmmm..." Theesa shook her head. "I didn't bring much money with me. I'm sure its expensive-"

"You can afford it, I assure you!"

"Oh, I'm sure I can," Theesa smiled. "Just not right this instant. I'll have to come back."

"TAKE it, then!" The shopkeeper thrust the knife toward her... hilt-first so as not to appear threatening. But Theesa felt threatened nonetheless. She backed away from the suddenly insistent storekeeper, glancing from the knife to his face...

...his face...

"I-I'm sorry, I really must be g-going," Theesa stammered. She turned and quickly lost herself in the crowd.

"Come BACK!" the storekeeper called... but she was gone.

He sighed.

"Damn," he said. He turned to the old man who was just emerging from the alley behind him... hobbling out of the shadows, barely keeping himself upright with the help of a thick staff. "You were right," he said. "They did something to her mind! She didn't even recognize me! DAMN THEM!"

"We'll get her back, Paul," said Gresham.

"I almost HAD her back!" Paul held up the wooden dagger. "This is made of wood from our house... our home. If she'd just touched it, she would have remembered! She would have remembered EVERYTHING!"

"You don't know that," said the aging mage. "You don't know how far the damage goes."

"I DO know!" Paul insisted. "She would have remembered! I have to get this to her... find out where she lives. Find out who this... this FRIEND of hers is!"

"Paul," Gresham's gnarled hand grasped his shoulder lightly. "There are other considerations at stake here. It may be safer if she DOESN'T remember for now. At the very least, it'll be less of a distraction for YOU."

Paul started to say something, but he just lowered his eyes and sighed.

"We have a lot of work to do," Gresham continued. "And precious little time to do it. They're going to come after her, and we can't protect her by ourselves. We sure as hell can't protect this whole city. We have to find out who we can trust, and warn them-"

"You think the'll come soon, then?" said Paul.

"Soon?" said Gresham. He looked out at the crowd, and then at the buildings beyond... scanning the rooftops and the shadows. "They're already here, Paul," he quietly. "I can feel them... out there, somewhere. They're already here..."

[The End of the Beginning]