Saul stood in his armory, the cuts on his arm freshly bandaged. The armory occupied a room at the top of the grand staircase in his father’s old mansion. Along the walls, his weapons and tools hung in braces. In spite of his tired eyes, Saul took great care in selecting from his collection. First, the obvious choices.

  He lifted a heavy art-child-sword from the mount near the window overlooking the front yard. The blade was three and a half feet long, and the cross guard split into a pair of black, feathery, wings that appeared to be sculpted into the metal. Saul knew, and many other makers would guess, those wings could become real on command, and return the sword to him.

  Such weapons were fairly common on Hidria, so it should not attract much attention when he arrived in Mortressa unless the guardians could send a warning ahead. He found the sword’s sheath beside its mount and then covered the blade. The tricky part would be getting to Hidria in the first place.

  The passages between worlds were protected by guardians from the Hidrian side. Uncle Jackal was one of those guardians, and he had just refused Saul access to his home realm earlier that evening. Saul shook his head. He would get to Mortressa, even if travel required force.

  Other makers might be able to best Saul in a sword fight. Combat was not his foremost skill though he had practiced often both before and since his exile. He picked up one of the oven-rods he had made when had first been exiled to Earth.

  The rod was fourteen inches long and designed with a broad circular press on the end opposite the grip. The press became hot as an oven when the rod activated by Saul’s command, but the heat it created diffused rapidly throughout material so as to make clay harden without having to put the sculpture in a conventional oven. He normally used the tool to rapidly complete the sculpture of his art-children, but it served as a nasty weapon for his off-hand.

  He slipped the oven rod into a loop on his belt, thought for a moment, then selected another device of the same sort to take with him. He couldn’t help but think of the seared and staring sockets of Pete’s eyes as he lay on the lawn before Gatewood Hall. He took a deep breath. At least, an oven rod would kill faster than Luther’s power of transformation. He hung the second rod beside the first in another loop of his belt.

  The house groaned with the wind, quickly interrupted by the sound of a car driving by. Saul sighed and considered what else he should take. He did not want to raise suspicion from Jackal if he didn’t have to, so he decided against any other large weapons. If he showed up to the passage house looking like he was ready for a war Jackal would surely not let him through willingly.

  But I am going to war, he thought, and Jackal won’t want to let me through either way. He grimaced. A dull clunk sounded from somewhere else in the mansion. The old building creaked often, but tonight he had to proceed with care. Saul closed his eyes and listened, but no second sound followed the first. He took a deep breath.

  Nat wriggled out of his collar. “Saul?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “I’m sure the gern will be all over that sword hilt. Even I sensed the power in it, and I’m not tuned like they are.”

  “Do you think the exiles will be able to protect themselves here?”

  “Maybe they can’t. Maybe they can. Some of their weapons work on gern, especially electric ones.” Saul nodded to himself as he scanned the racks of weapons. He walked over to a cluster of pedestals. On one of them sat an orb six inches in diameter, that seethed with tiny storm clouds beneath its polished glass surface. Saul considered the orb. He felt its presence heavily, too extreme for trying to get past Jackal, who would sense its power with ease, even at a distance. He took a simple wooden bowl from the pedestal on one side of the orb. For all its appearances it could have been carved by someone here on Earth.

  “A surge bowl?” Nat said. “So you are going for electricity.”

  “With all the gern who will be going after the hilt, I need to be ready.”

  “I agree.” Nat climbed onto Saul’s shoulder, stick-like legs digging into the material of Saul’s jacket. “But that bowl could power a whole city for days if it was harnessed.”

  “True, but its taphic presence is nonexistent. Jackal won’t notice it.”

  “Good idea. Just make sure you aim the thing before you activate it.”

  Saul smirked. “I’m not a great shot, but the bowl will make up for some of that.” He slipped the bowl into the front pocket of a backpack with a few lumps of clay in plastic bags.

  Depending on how long it took him to catch up with Luther and Irene and the others, he might need to make a new art-child on the way.

  He turned out the lights in the armory and then stepped into the hall outside. Saul padlocked the door behind him, then pocketed the key. He descended the main staircase in the moonlight from high windows in the entrance hall. No other lights were on in the house.

  He went to the kitchen, but there was no food in the cabinets. The previous day, he had donated his last cans of soup to a homeless shelter. He had emptied the rest over the course of the prior week, in preparation for moving out. Guess that wouldn’t be happening, but nothing would be left to spoil this way. He would just be eating out tomorrow if he stayed. Not like money had ever been an issue for him on Earth thanks to his family’s holdings and investments, and he had a pouch of Hidrian coins in his backpack.

  He opened the freezer door beside the sink and took from the nearly empty container the three vials of thick hazel-colored liquid he had stored there during the years of his exile.

  Four against one would be a difficult fight when he caught up with Luther. He didn’t like to think Irene would try to kill him, but her bird had drawn his blood already. One couldn’t be too careful.

  The vials contained temper sap, from the trees on his father’s estate back on Hidria. They could seal any wound. Saul’s father had often boasted of their power, but the trees never gave up their sap easily. Few makers even knew such a quick means to repair wounds existed.

  Saul put the vials carefully in a padded tin, and then slipped the tin into his backpack. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need them at all. He zipped up the pack. A hissing sound reached his ears as he slipped the straps over his shoulders. He picked up the sheathed sword from where he had set it on the kitchen counter and then turned to look into the entrance hall.

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  He froze at what he saw.

  Nat cringed against Saul’s shoulder. What stood before them in the entrance hall, could only be an abei-gern.

  The creature was shaped as a biped, with heavy arms and legs. It stood about five and a half feet tall, over six inches shorter than Saul. The ring of silvery metal that passed through both its shoulders extended a foot and half ahead and behind the creature, connected to the body by rods of the same metal thrust from the ring into the flesh of the monster at sharp angles. An earth born exile might have seen a short heavily built human, but Saul’s trained eyes saw through the flickers of the creature’s guise. Its face was that of a wild boar. Its legs ended in shiny black hooves.

  The gern turned toward Saul, pig-like nose sniffing the air. Beady eyes focused on his face. “Maker,” the creature croaked. “Where is he?”

  “He?” Saul walked toward the gern slowly. Nat scurried to Saul’s collar and dove inside the jacket. “Who do you mean?”

  “Apahar,” said the gern in its dry voice. “Want to see Apahar.”

  Saul nodded, recognizing the name of the aleph-gern he had grown up being told stories about back on Hidria, the creature he knew to be buried beneath Gatewood Hall. All the stories said Apahar was dead. Saul did not know if that was true or not, but he knew the hilt contained a portion of the godlike monster’s power. Abei-gern are but a shadow of that, he told himself, though he had never fought one face to face. Most makers over the past thousand years never had, unless they sought them out. Saul guessed the taking of the broken hilt may well have changed that.

  He tensed, ready to draw his sword. “Apahar’s not here.”

  “Not? Not?” The gern’s face twisted into a snarl. From the old books Saul had read about gern, he guessed this one was young, perhaps only days or hours old. The metallic taph ring embedded in the creature’s shoulders and chest reflected starlight from the windows in the entrance hall. The gern seethed. The creature’s ring began to darken, shifting from silver to angry red.

  Saul drew his sword and slashed down at the gern’s neck. The gern tried to dodge the blow, but the sword cleft a gash in the pallid flesh of its shoulder. The creature gave pig-like squeal, but despite its obvious pain, it surged toward Saul.

  He backed into the kitchen doorway and shifted the point of his sword. The gern impaled itself on his extended sword blade. Saul breathed a sigh of relief and hoped they all turned out to be this dumb.

  “Poor bastard.” He kicked the monster in the chest to push its body off the blade. The creature crumpled without a sound. He stepped past the body of the fallen gern and into the entrance hall.

  A roar echoed from the top of the stairs. Saul looked up and saw a second gern, this one like a humanoid cow with its silver ring about its collar, vault the railing. The gern crashed down into the entrance hall, cracking the hardwood floor panels beneath its bulk.

  Saul looked up at the gern’s bovine face. “Let me guess. You want Apahar?”

  A loud rasping sound came from the lawn outside the mansion. Saul hoped there weren’t more gern out there. He had warded his doors, but clearly those wards weren’t enough to keep gern out.

  The cow gern bellowed and charged toward Saul. A long blade emerged from one of the creature’s palms, easily three feet long. The gern gave a wild swing of its blade. Saul ducked into the creature’s guard. The gern’s blade whistled over his head. Saul struck with his sword. The gern’s bladed arm flew into the air, severed by his cut. He completed his slash, stepped past the gern, and then turned, both hands on the hilt of his sword.

  The gern staggered as it turned to face Saul, missing one arm. A second blade emerged from the creature’s remaining palm. The cow gern thrust at Saul with the new weapon.

  He raised his sword to parry, but a touch too slow. The gern’s blade deflected from Saul’s sword and slashed across his shoulder, nearly hitting Nat. The art-child squealed and scurried around to Saul’s back.

  Saul grunted in pain as blood dripped form his torn jacket and shirt. He brought his sword back to guard and backed into a hall that led past the grand staircase. The gern lumbered after him, blade raised so its edge nearly touched that of Saul’s sword.

  “Apahar.” The creature murmured. “Where is Apahar?”

  Saul glared into the creature’s eyes. “You won’t find him here.”

  The cow gern grimaced with huge rounded teeth. It lunged at Saul, blade first.

  Saul pelted to the gern’s wounded side. The creature’s blade slashed across the bandages he had wrapped over the wound Irene’s bird had dealt him. The edge sliced through the wrappings.

  Saul’s sword bit into the gern’s neck. The creature looked at him as if confused. Then it stumbled sideways and hit the wall, where it dented the plaster. The gern crumpled to the floor.

  “Time to go,” Saul said.

  “Saul, you’re bleeding.”

  “Nat, I’ll be—” A wave of dizziness hit as he looked down at his bloody shoulder and the slashed arm below it. “Okay, I’ll give you that. Get me a vial of the sap.” He didn’t like using it so soon, but the sap would seal these wounds no problem. Nat wormed out of Saul’s collar and then fluttered onto the backpack.

  After a moment of tiny grips pulling on the zipper, Nat said, “It’s open.”

  Saul reached back and took the padded tin from his pack. He uncorked one of the vials. He spread as little of the sap as he could over each wound. Warm tendrils of healing power reached down into the cuts and sealed them without scars in seconds. Saul set the vial carefully back in the tin and then replaced the lid.

  When the tin was safely zipped inside his backpack again, he sheathed his sword and attached the weapon to his backpack by a strap. Saul strode to the front doors. He opened one of them and stepped out onto the dark porch of the mansion.

  The smell of something burning wafted to him from the yard. He sensed no gern’s presence, but the body of one creature lay slumped front-first on the steps of the porch. The creature looked part-pig, part-human, but clearly dead. Blackened flesh ran from the base of the neck and down the spine to where its taph ring wrapped about is midsection glimmered in the moonlight.

  Another dead gern, of similar appearance to the first, lay the feet of a shadowy form before him in the driveway of the house.

  Saul squinted at the figure as she walked around the gern and up the driveway. A flashlight flickered on and fell upon Saul. He blinked and raised an arm to shield his eyes. From behind the glare, the voice of the woman holding the light was soft.

  “Looks like you’ve had a crappy night. But I saw the other guy. What are you? Do you think you can get away with murder?”

  Saul grimaced over the beam of light at the face of the hardworking, pretty barista from that afternoon. She wore a tight smile, obviously put on for effect. Her brown eyes met his and she lowered the flashlight’s beam a little. Saul folded his arms. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I saw it. You had a falling out with your gang, back by Gatewood Hall.”

  “You’re that barista?”

  “In the daytime, yeah.” Her lips twitched.

  She killed these two gern, but she’s not a maker. Interesting.

  “I know who you are. Saul Burton. Kerenger’s wealthy shut-in. Guess you get out at night.”

  “I didn’t kill Pete. Those people broke into Gatewood Hall without me. I was there to stop them.”

  “Huh, I’m not sure if I believe that. My name’s Olivia. And you sure smell like blood.”

  “So do you. Could be because we’ve both been in fights tonight. I’d rather not make this another.” He gestured to the sword hanging from his backpack. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into, Olivia.”

  “Better than you think.” She brushed strands of dark hair back from along her ear to reveal a few faint scars by her ear. “I’ve known for a long time what monster blood smells like. I hunt them.”

  “You know about gern.” Saul walked down the steps of the porch. She could be useful. This town is going to be one place the gern congregate, but they’ll also be going after the hilt. He raised his hands. “Look, we shouldn’t talk here. I killed two more monsters inside. Between them, and the ones you took care of out here, more are bound to show up soon.”

  Gern cannibalized other gern all the time, at least according to the old books. The bodies both outside and inside would be gone before morning.

  “Fine,” said Olivia. “But I want the truth.”

  Saul sighed. “I’m too tired to lie at the moment.” And even as he said it he knew it was true. Olivia motioned him past her, then followed him out of the driveway. Her presence, once he sensed it close, was like most of earth born exiles, subtle and low in power. Her taph lacked maker magic. He had questions for her too, and more formed in his mind every moment.

  When did you learn about gern? How did you kill these two so easily? Do you know about makers?

  “Let’s go to the Giant Eagle. I’ll tell you what I can there.”

  And you’ll answer my questions too, he added mentally.