We reappeared on our neighbor’s rooftop exactly as I thought we would. Because we came from a horizontal floor to an angled rooftop, our footing was completely insecure when we appeared. I was ready for it, but the others stumbled a little bit. Mira seemed to have good footing, and she steadied us all before we slid off. This time, the magic made me feel like there was something sticking through my right foot, and I tried not to let the others know.

  “Steady!” Mira whispered.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I guess I should’ve mentioned that crouching makes the transition easier.”

  “Would’ve been good to know,” Bran said.

  The paid was fading quickly, but I was still too irritated to care what Bran thought. “Well, now you do. Consider yourself informed.”

  “That was handy. But weird,” Elle said.

  “Thanks, I guess,” I said. “We’ll need to make another three jumps, I think. Ready yourselves.”

  I waited until I was sure there were three hands on my shoulders and repeated the process until we appeared on the roof of Stonekeep Castle. The golems turned their heads to look at us but made no further move. A sigh of relief escaped me, as I really wasn’t sure they wouldn’t blast us off the rooftop, and I didn’t really consider ahead of time whether or not the golems would attack the others. It just didn’t enter my mind before that moment. As soon as we appeared and I saw the golems, I was ready to whoosh us out of there, but thankfully, it didn’t come to that.

  “Wait. Did you know we’d be safe up here?” Mira asked. She must have sensed me tense up. Nothing got by her.

  “I didn’t think about it before we appeared. I thought it likely they wouldn’t attack since you’re with me, but I really wasn’t sure, no,” I said. “I was ready to whoosh us out of here again if they turned hostile! We’re in uncharted waters here, you know.”

  That seemed to calm her down as she considered it. Bran and Elle weren’t so happy to consider that, either, now that I looked.

  “All right. I guess it was worth the risk,” Mira said. She looked at the piles of ash that were spreading out around the keep’s roof in the gentle breeze. “It may just have been a bigger risk than I thought.”

  I crossed the roof and put my hand on the stone archway that was in the square block of stone in front of us. I could feel the magic inside it now that I was touching it, and I instinctively knew how to trigger that ancient magic. In fact, it felt a lot stronger than I thought it would. I focused my thoughts and triggered the magic needed to open the portal, and I felt the acknowledgement and stirring of the power within. From the edges of the archway, a faint, silvery glow radiated, which rapidly expanded to fill the surface of the stone. The stone wall seemed to disappear, and beyond the archway a stone corridor, then an image of a forest meadow came into focus. Not knowing what else to do, I walked through. On the other side, the forest snapped into focus as I cleared the portal. It was only slightly disorienting as I stepped through. Bran, Elle and Mira came through behind me. Still sensing the active magic, I made sure the portal was closed after we got in. We couldn’t be too careful.

  The place we were standing in had a stone floor, but it looked like we were standing in a meadow surrounded by a forest. The light was as bright as if we were standing outside, and I could actually see the sky and sun above me. That could be helpful if the sun here corresponded with the sun outside, and it seemed to me that the sun was in the right place. I ran my hand along the area to the right of the portal, and it felt like stone. It was a very clever illusion that even mimicked the smell of the blue flowers that appeared all over the grassy looking floor. We were in one of the turrets, I thought, as the walls were circular here in about a forty-foot diameter. Directly ahead of us was a wall that framed a corridor leading to the left and the right at a slight angle to the corridors.

  “You guys can see the walls and floor through the illusion, right?” I asked.

  “I can see the walls or the illusion, whichever I’m concentrating most on,” Elle said.

  “Just making sure,” I said.

  “Because the illusion could be a trap?” Mira asked.

  “Coulda been,” I said, considering. “I don’t sense any harmful magic, whatever that may look like. Seems safe enough. It looks like we’re in a turret in a corner of the keep.”

  “Left or right?” Bran asked, always the practical one.

  “Why not take all left turns? We probably won’t get lost that way,” Mira said.

  No one had a better idea, so Mira started walking down a very wide corridor to the left. The hallway must have been around twenty feet wide. We didn’t get very far before we came across a room on our right-hand side. It was forty feet deep and probably a hundred feet to the left and right. It had big columns in the center of the room that held up the ceiling forty feet above us. The room was full of golems just like the ones on the roof. They stood shoulder to shoulder and filled the room with a sort of a dormant menace. There must have been hundreds of them in there. Thankfully, they didn’t move at all when we approached.

  “Is this the Adamantine Legion?” Bran asked.

  The Adamantine Legion is a now mythical fighting force that was created to fight the invaders in the War of the Breaking. It was said that the legion was invincible, and that it was the only reason the free peoples of the Spheres lived to see the end of the war. It was such an old tale that the people of Stonekeep would have forgotten about them centuries ago if not for the golems in the great hall of the keep. They were awesome in size and strength, and seemed even more so since we were looking up at so many of them in this one room.

  “I thought there’d be more,” I said.

  “Well, I’m not going in there,” Mira said. “What if our proximity wakes them up?”

  “Yeah, let’s not tempt fate.”

  Seeing no exits from this room and having no desire to explore it to be sure, we continued down the corridor. We reached another circular chamber with an inactive archway in the wall on the left and the corridor continued ahead at a slight right angle, like we were walking around the inside of an octagon. This turret had purple flowers in the meadow. I walked over to the archway and placed my hand on it. I could feel the magic in it and invoked its activation. When the portal shimmered to life, it revealed a hazy corridor that went to the left and right with a pair of wooden double doors directly across the corridor.

  “Wanna see where it goes?” I asked.

  Everyone just sort of shrugged, so I walked through the portal, and everyone followed.

  The walls here were enchanted to show a prairie with rolling grasslands that seemed to stretch on for as far as the eye could see. If I concentrated, I could see the stone walls, floor and ceiling above us through the illusion, which reminded me of the area around Warsong Keep, though I couldn’t see a castle. The stone corridor underneath the illusion probably formed a much smaller octagon and we were near the center of it, if I judged the angles correctly.

  There were handles on the double door in front of us, not knobs, and Mira pulled one open. Inside was a huge dining hall with no illusion of the outdoors. The room must have been fifty feet deep and more than double that across. It still had nice, polished tables arranged with chairs surrounding them, and there was no dust on anything. There were double doors directly across from us, and on the left and right walls.

  “I think if we try to look in every room, we’ll be here all week,” Elle said.

  “You’re right. This place is huge,” Mira said. “Let’s just get the lay of the land, as they say.”

  The corridor was indeed arranged as an octagon, and it circled back to the portal on our left. Looking in some of the doors, we saw what looked like a couple of common rooms with comfortable furniture, corridors full of bedchambers, and even bathrooms with running water at the ends of the hallways. There was a room that was furnished with rows of small desks and chairs. The common areas and hallways here all had the grassy field illusion on the walls. In the center of the octagon were four individual suites each equipped with a bathroom, closet and study. There was functional furniture in each room here.

  “The furniture here looks like it was polished yesterday,” Elle said.

  “Yeah. I was expecting ruins and cobwebs,” I said.

  “If I had to guess, this whole area was dedicated to teaching, and the suites in the center are where the instructors lived,” Mira said.

  We opened a double door on the opposite end of the octagon from the dining hall to find a huge area with nothing in it. It had a very high ceiling and a pair of staircases going down from a balcony that overlooked the chamber to the floor below.

  “This could easily be some sort of practice chamber,” Bran said.

  “Retrace our steps?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I think we’re done here. There were no books. Did you notice?” Mira asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve been on the lookout for anything that could teach me something,” I said. I was still very insecure about knowing so little about magic, and I would’ve given anything to find a book that would tell me how to use it without all the pain.

  Mira’s question was rhetorical, I realized a little late, but no one beat me up about it. We went around the hallway to the portal. I activated it and we all stepped back into the original corridor we first came to with the purple flowers. Mira led us around to the left, and the portal closed after I moved away from it. We came to an intersection that had a corridor, again twenty feet wide, which went to the right, towards the center of the keep. We could see that there were a pair of adamantine double doors there that were closed.

  “I think we should leave that kind of door alone, don’t you?” Elle asked.

  “That would be wise,” Bran said. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “Bah! Where’s your sense of adventure?” Mira asked with a smile. She didn’t run down the hallway and immediately open the doors like an idiot, though. We all knew tales of tyrants who trapped the doors to their sanctums, and none of us were dumb enough to try to open doors in a place like this without a little thought.

  Mira’s adventurous spirit was unquenchable, and she continued down the rest of the short corridor to another circular room, this time with a field of red flowers growing on vines on the walls. I activated the portal, which was getting easier for me, and more importantly, didn’t hurt, and we saw a pair of double doors twenty feet into the portal with a corridor to the left and right. When we went through, we found there were no illusions covering the walls here. Mira opened the double doors and inside was a smithy with two complete sets of tools, two anvils and two forges. There were some very large casts in a metal shelf against the far wall. This was definitely a place I could sink my teeth into. Strange that there wasn’t a bellows set up in this room, though.

  Both the left and right corridor from the portal seemed to go in another octagon pattern around a huge area set up with cranes, chains, ropes and pulleys and such. It looked like a big assembly area.

  “Do you think they made the golems here?” I asked.

  “I’d say that’s a good guess,” Bran said. “It makes sense.”

  We found that this floor was arranged with a total of four smithies like the first one. There were four chambers that were full of ores and coal, too.

  “I think some of the ore there’s adamantium,” Bran said. “It’s worth a fortune!”

  “Sure is,” I said. “We don’t know anyone that can afford it, except maybe Hamot and the Terrans, but think of the things we could make here.” I had visions of adamantine armor and weapons running through my head. “I think there are smaller portals in each forge. They have casts but no smelting crucibles. They have forges but no bellows. We’re going to have to figure this out when we have time.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get a quick lay of the land before we have to report in,” Bran said. He clearly wanted to figure out how to get some adamantium weapons or armor, too, but he tore himself away. If he could do it, so could I. The smaller twin in me wouldn’t let me fail where Bran succeeded.

  Aware again of the time slipping away, we went back through the portal to the original corridor. Mira led us past the red meadow to a place halfway down a hallway that had a room on the right side full of golems identical to the first room we found, with a portal immediately on the left outside wall opposite the doorway. I activated the portal, which took us to a forty-by-forty chamber with a forty-foot ceiling. This chamber had no illusions on the walls. There was a twenty-foot-wide corridor going straight ahead a short distance and ending at a pair of massive adamantine double doors twenty feet wide and forty feet high. There was a pair of golems in the room flanking the portal, practically right next to us. The golems turned their heads and looked down on us with a shriek of metal on metal but did not move other than that.

  “Given the size and shape of those doors, I think we’re on the first floor of the keep. Those are the doors in the great hall, the ones with the golems standing against them,” Mira said.

  “I bet you’re right. Let’s get out of here before someone hears something from the other side,” Elle said softly.

  “Or before these golems kill us for getting too close to the doors,” Mira said.

  “Good call,” Bran said.

  We filed through the portal and continued to the left to the next circular room, which had yellow flowers this time. I activated the portal, and we stepped through. We were in another level that had a corridor ringing the outer wall, and there was a portal in each of the two circular rooms that we could see. Ahead of us was a huge area separated by walls and filled with arches, that was packed with golems. With the size of these rooms, there had to be thousands of golems on this floor alone. We exchanged glances, as we remembered the power of each golem as displayed against the Xerith this very day.

  “The rest of the Adamantine Legion?” Bran asked.

  “Gotta be,” I said. “Hey, how can the floor even hold all their weight?”

  “Come on,” Bran said. “Everybody knows the castle and the inner walls are completely impervious to attack.”

  “Yeah, but each one of those things weighs as much as a house. That’s a lot of weight.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself thinking about it, genius.”

  “Anyone who controls these golems could probably rule the world,” Mira said. If I were more observant, I would’ve noticed this red flag in Mira’s personality then, and it could’ve saved me a lot of heartache later.

  A thought occurred to me. “Hey, if this is the biggest set of rooms full of golems, wouldn’t you put that next to the exterior exits if you were the commander?”

  “You bet,” Bran said. “So, those archways…” He pointed down the hallway.

  “Gotta be portals to somewhere outside the castle,” Mira finished for him. “Yeah. Makes sense.”

  “Let’s leave the exploration of the portals in this level for later,” I suggested, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. “If ever.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that,” Bran said.

  We went back through the portal. We went left again, gradually working our way around the perimeter of some unknown level of the keep. We came to another intersection that led to an adamantine double door towards the center of the keep to our right, but we went straight through without discussing where the doors led. We came to a circular chamber with orange flowers in the illusory meadow and found that this portal led to another full level just like the one we found that was for teaching. This floor had the very same empty practice chamber on the opposite side of the keep, but this level on the lower floor of the two. There were a bunch of portals in the main corridor of this floor that were not in the floor above, though.

  I decided to try one on a whim and found that it led to an exterior balcony on top of the turret with a little garden in it. I quickly closed the portal without stepping through in case someone happened to be looking at the keep.

  “Looks like we’re halfway up the keep. One of these portals led to the gardens where the aqueducts take water to the rest of the upper city. They had nice flower gardens up there,” I said.

  “Huh. The ancients were gardeners,” Mira said. “Who knew?”

  We retraced our footsteps back to the original corridor and went to the next circular chamber, this one with deep green illusory ivy vines growing on the walls and walked through its portal. It led to a smaller version of an open area like a marketplace in the city. The portal arch was set in the center of the square, and the whole area in here looked like a city street. Built here were four city blocks of townhomes, each with suites of rooms that varied quite a bit. It felt like living quarters for common folk. Rather than fully explore this area, we went back through the portal and tried the next one.

  The circular chamber we came to next had white flowers in the meadow and led to a corridor stretching to the left and right of us with a big, golden, double door in front of us. The corridor was twenty feet wide and had a very rich feel to it. The walls had white marble panels with gold trim and framework in regular intervals with paintings of important looking people hung on them. There were a pair of golems flanking the double doors ahead of us. The golems turned their heads to watch us but did nothing, thank goodness. Secretly, the golems made me nervous. I didn’t know what they were commanded to do by their creators, which meant walking down the wrong hallway or trying to open a door could be a deadly mistake.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Bran said.

  “That’s a whole lot of gold,” Mira said with a calculating look. The wistful expression on her face showed us she was smart enough to not try to chip any gold off the doors.

  “Left passage?” I asked.

  “As good as any, brother of mine,” Bran said.

  I turned to the left, which was a short corridor. It only went about forty feet before it took a left turn. There was a door on the right-hand side close to the corner that had a golem standing next to it. As we got closer, the golem turned its head to look at us, but did nothing. I turned the corner and saw that the corridor was only about seventy or eighty feet long. There were two ornately carved wooden doors on the right-hand wall evenly spaced apart, with another ornate wooden door at the end of the hall. There was a double door in the same style on the left wall close to the end of the corridor. A golem guarded the door at the end of the corridor, and another was stationed on the right-hand wall equidistant between the two doors on the right.

  “Just in case, why don’t you all keep some distance between us as I try these doors,” I suggested. “These golems make me nervous because we don’t know what their orders are. They could attack anyone who turns a door handle or something.”

  “Now that you mention it, that seems like a really great idea,” Mira said, taking a big step backward and clasping her hands behind her back. “Better you than me.” Another red flag ignored.

  Bran, Elle and Mira stayed back near the inactive portal while I went to the door in the corner on the right. Still no reaction from the golem. I reached for the doorknob with my eyes on the golem at all times. Still nothing. Then I touched the doorknob with a finger. Still no reaction from the golem. I breathed a big sigh of relief and opened the door. Inside was a very large office with nice furniture. There was a desk situated in front of an adamantine door in the center of the far wall. I walked around the desk and chairs and tried the handle, but the door was locked. There didn’t look to be any sort of keyhole, either. It must be a magical lock. Concentrating, I could feel the magic inside it when I was close to touching the doorknob. This was my first time sensing a locking magic, and I paused to get a feel for it. It was then that I sensed the warding spell that was coiled like a snake. Without probing the magic, I quickly drew back before it activated. Looking around the office, there were some books in a shelf close to the locked door that were all the same size, color and shape. Probably logbooks of some kind, if I had to guess. On the desk was a set of scales and weights like the ones moneychangers or merchants would use. Whatever was behind this door must be valuable, I thought. It was probably a vault for the castellan. I left the room.

  “This one is an office for someone important,” I said. “There’s a set of moneychangers’ scales and an adamantine door in the far wall that has a dangerous warding spell on it.”

  “I bet there’s something really good in there!” Mira said. “Surely you could open it?”

  “Did you hear what I said about the magical trap on that door?” I asked. “You try it. I’ll wait out here to see what happens.”

  Mira actually thought about it while she tapped her foot with her arms crossed. “On second thought, I think I’ll let that this one pass.” She rubbed her hands together and grinned with feigned evil. “Soon, mystery door. Soon.”

  I turned and walked over to the first door on the right, and slowly and cautiously tried the door, my eyes once again on the golem in case it turned to attack. There was no reaction as I opened the door. Looking inside, I saw it was a very nicely furnished living area with three doors in the room leading to other areas. There were no personal items laying around, so it was probably safe to assume I wouldn’t find anything useful in there. I looked back and called out what I found, then moved to the next door on the right. I used the same cautious approach and found that it was another very nice living area inside. I walked to the door at the end of the hall with the golem standing next to it, and cautiously tried the doorknob. It was unlocked, and inside was another living area.

  I walked back to where the others were waiting and told them what I found.

  “I’d like to take a look in that office, just for curiosity’s sake,” Mira said.

  We all walked down the hallway toward the door. When Mira got within ten feet of the door, the golem very loudly hefted its greataxe in preparation to strike. We all drew back at once, hearts pounding. With increased distance, the golem returned to its peaceful state with the axe resting on the floor. We each blew a big sigh of relief.

  Eyes wide, Mira said, “Maybe I don’t want to go in that office after all. Yeah, I think I’m fine right out here.”

  “The double doors on the left aren’t guarded. Let’s see what’s in there,” I said.

  “You first,” Mira said.

  Smiling, I walked over to the ornate double doors on the left. Opening them up, I was surprised to see an enormous library inside. There was a ten-foot-wide hallway of sorts going straight through the room to a set of double doors on the other side. On either side of that pathway were very tall bookshelves. The room was divided by shelves in concentric rings like a big target. There were ladders here and there that rolled back and forth on tracks in the ceilings with wheels on the bottoms, and there was a circular desk in the very center of the room. There looked to be enough books here to provide insight on every topic imaginable. None of us had ever seen such a collection before, and we stopped for a moment to admire the magnitude of what we found.

  “Wow,” Bran said.

  We walked through the library looking at all the books. “How’ll we find anything useful in here? Is all of this even in our language?” Elle asked.

  “There’s got to be some books on magic in there,” I said. I was almost drooling. Of the four of us, I was the one who liked to read the most. I nearly wore out our family’s book on the adventures of the Pirate King all my myself.

  “Dunno, but I think we’re running out of time,” Bran said. “We’re definitely going to have to come back here later.”

  We walked through the double doors on the other side of the library to find ourselves in the same twenty-foot-wide, gold decorated hallway. To our left the corridor turned to the left, probably back towards the portal and the golden doors we had not explored yet, and there was a wooden door in the corner facing us. To our right, the corridor ended in a set of ornately carved wooden doors with a pair of golems standing guard. On the wall of the corridor across from us were three more ornately carved wooden doors equally spaced along the wall. We tried the unguarded doors in the opposite wall first, and inside each was a large living area with a bedroom on the far side. Each bedroom had a spacious closet bigger than the room Bran and I grew up in and had a bathroom with the now expected indoor plumbing. They were very nice rooms with wood paneled walls, comfortable furniture, and not a speck of dust in the whole place. The bed sheets smelled freshly washed, too.

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  The door at the end of the corridor opened to reveal a kitchen with its own bathroom and a couple of storage areas for food. That left only the two guarded doors remaining, the doors at the end of this hallway that were wooden, and the golden doors near the portal.

  “What do you guys think? What’s next?” I asked.

  “If I had to guess,” Mira said, “The wooden doors at the end of this hallway are where the lord of this castle resided. The golden doors are probably a throne room or audience hall or something.”

  “That’s probably a really good guess,” I said. “I’m dying to know how the lord of the castle lived. Want to check it out?”

  “Yeah, but let’s be careful about it,” Mira said.

  I walked down the corridor by myself, the others standing close to the library doors. When I got within ten feet of the door, the golems hefted their greataxes. I immediately jumped back, and they lowered their axes. I walked back to the others.

  “Well, we’re not getting in there,” I said. “Let’s check the golden doors.”

  “Carefully,” Elle said.

  I walked down the corridor to the left and carefully approached the two golems standing guard there. They looked at me but took no action. Slowly, I reached out to touch the golden door. Still no action. I breathed a sigh of relief and waved the others forward as I pushed open the door. The room inside was breathtaking. It was about a hundred feet wide and about sixty or seventy feet deep in front of me. On the opposite wall was a dais with three steps upon which sat a big throne that looked to be made from a single yellow topaz. The light in the room was almost white, the same as it was elsewhere in the castle, but the throne emitted a slightly darker yellow light. It was dazzling. The room itself had gold trim everywhere with a white marble cladding the walls, ceiling, and floor. I moved inside the room, then paused to take it all in. The contents of this room were worth more than the entire Kingdom of Mithram.

  On the same far wall on which the throne was situated, there were two large archways, one to the left and one to the right of the throne. There were also four golems in the room, one on either side of the dais, and one in the left and right corners close to the sides of the portals. These golems were the bigger ones like the ones guarding the gates in the great hall on the first floor. These thirty-foot-tall golems were beyond massive. They made a person feel downright insignificant. And harmless.

  “Now this is a throne room,” Mira said from the doorway as the others moved deeper into the room.

  I didn’t notice before, but there was something leaning against the throne. It looked like a steel mace. Granted, it was a pretty big one, pushing the limits of what a warrior could wield in one hand, but it was very plain compared to the splendor around it.

  “Yeah, this is really something,” Bran said, looking around in amazement. “This is more gold than I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”

  “And that throne is worth more than a whole kingdom,” Elle said.

  The golems remained stationary, so we advanced closer to the throne. I began to feel the presence of some very strong magic in the room.

  “Hold up a minute, guys. There’s some very strong magic here, and I’d like to get a better feel for what it is before we do anything,” I cautioned.

  I put my hands out, not necessarily to help me feel, but to help me focus, and tried to sense what was going on in this room. I felt intense power concentrated in the throne itself. The throne seemed to be linked in some way to the two portals beside the dais. Maybe the person sitting on the throne could control the portals, I thought. The golems had a lot of pent-up magic in them, of course. The mace beside the throne was a magical weapon, I sensed. I couldn’t feel any imminently hostile magic in either the throne or the mace, but the dais held magic, too. I focused on that, slowly walking closer. There was a mix of things there. One thing was a shielding magic of some kind. The other thing was hostile, I was sure of it.

  “I think we’re safe here in most of the room,” I said. “I don’t sense anything waiting to blow up in our faces except at the dais. The throne is magical, as is the mace leaning against it. I have the feeling that the throne controls the two portals in some way, but there’s more to the throne than just the link to the portals.”

  I walked over to the dais, holding my left arm out, concentrating hard with my higher senses. There was still no reaction from the magic even as my hand was above the first step. Keeping my focus sharp, I could tell that there was something in the magic of the dais that was looking for someone who wasn’t me. I paused a moment to consider. Very slowly, I approached the first step, halfway thinking I wouldn’t be able to react in time to save my foot if something happened. Elle was here, though, so I’d probably be all right, and I was no stranger to debilitating pain. Slowly, I climbed the steps. The warding spell didn’t react to me. At the top, I stood before the throne. There was still no reaction from the golems, thankfully. The others came forward also. As Mira was within reach of the first step of the dais, the golems to either side of the dais lifted their axes with a shriek of metal on metal. She stepped back quickly, and the golems resumed their relaxed stance.

  “Well, this is as close as we get,” Mira said.

  “You know, this tells us something about the makers of this place,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Bran asked.

  “There’s a deadly magic waiting for anyone who the magic isn’t expecting, but the golems give their own kind of warning to keep the innocent from stepping on it.”

  “They were decent people,” Elle said.

  “Still, you should be careful, Jeron. That throne could be booby trapped or something by a mechanical means.”

  “Gosh, that never occurred to me.”

  I picked up the mace and immediately noticed it didn’t feel as heavy as it should be. As I was examining it, I could see through an illusion around it, and it was revealed to be a weapon of great beauty when I touched that magic. The handle, shaft and head of the mace were made of one piece of adamantium. It had a small hand guard that was plated with gold, as was the pommel. The handle was wrapped in some sort of blue chord that felt both smooth and yet was easy to keep a grip on. There was a chord made of the same flexible material extending from the pommel that was meant to be wrapped around the wrist to keep the weapon from slipping out of the wielder’s grip. There were light engravings in the metal with elemental renderings of fire, cold, lightning, and something else that looked like air, or sound or something. It felt right in my hands somehow.

  “That suddenly looks a lot nicer than it did,” Bran said.

  “Indeed, brother. I don’t see anyone else using this, so I think I’ll have to test it out a bit,” I said with a smile. “You know, just to be sure that it’s a good weapon and all.” I used the magic of the weapon to make it look like a common item again.

  “It’s odd that a magical mace like that is just sitting around in here, don’t you think?” Elle asked.

  “Have we seen anything normal in this whole place?” Mira asked. “If I were to guess, I’d say someone deliberately left that mace in a place that normal people would never be able to find it.”

  I made a mental leap, thinking of the letter I was given from my real mother when I was ten years old. “You think it was my birth mother that left this here for me?” I asked.

  “Of course, you bonehead. That’s exactly what happened,” Mira said. “The letter said your life would change when you entered the portals of the keep. That’s like saying ‘don’t go in there’ without being obvious about it. What happens when someone puts out a sign that says, ‘Don’t walk on the grass?’”

  “Everyone walks on the grass,” Bran said.

  “Exactly. I think your birth mother wanted you to find your way here so you could find this weapon,” Mira said. “And that you wouldn’t be killed by the magic protecting it.”

  “You’re way too devious for your own good,” I said. “Even so, I bet you’re right. There’s probably more to this than I can see.”

  “Speaking of that, what can you tell us about the throne?” Bran asked.

  I turned my attention to the throne itself. It was a brilliant object, with facets on every surface reflecting and refracting the light. It was of exquisite craftsmanship and must have taken years to polish. The throne had a cushion on it that could fit someone a little bigger than me, and the seat looked like it could easily accommodate my armor if I were so equipped. Not knowing what else to do, and not sensing anything malevolent about it, I sat in the throne and rested the mace across my knees.

  There was a gentle tugging on my mind when I had both of my hands on the armrests. I resisted at first, but didn’t feel anything amiss, so I decided to go with the flow of the magic. Suddenly I could see the throne from a bird’s eye view, as if I were hovering over it. It was a very strange sensation. “Whoa!” I could still hear as if I were sitting in the throne, but there was a buzz almost, as if I were hearing from a point above me also. I felt like the throne had the ability to display this point of view to the others somehow, so I let that happen. I heard and saw the others gasp as a picture formed in the air before the throne, easily visible to all around, of the bird’s eye point of view I could see.

  “Whoa, that’s incredible!” Mira exclaimed.

  “Are you controlling that, or is the throne somehow controlling you?” Bran asked.

  “I’m controlling this, I think,” I said. I concentrated, and the point of view changed to expose the golems from above their heads. “Very interesting. I wonder what else I can see.”

  I thought of my house and concentrated on viewing what was inside. Suddenly the throne displayed our living room, where Dortham was sitting with a grandson on each knee. He was telling them a story from his youth about meeting Nora. I shifted my concentration to center on Sergeant Doornail. He was in a little apartment talking with an older man. They were both sitting in comfortable armchairs, enjoying a mug of beer.

  “I’ve always had a taste for Gerti Brewer’s ale, dad,” Sergeant Doornail said. “Thanks for picking up a cask.” They talked about the beer as we conversed in the throne room.

  “Hey, that’s Mr. Nail!” Mira exclaimed. “He was my landlord before I moved out to live in the keep. I thought the sergeant got his name from being tough all this time. I’ll bet his name really begins with Dor, like Dorian or something.”

  “We’ll have to ask him when we see him next,” I said. “Any requests?”

  “Yeah,” Bran said. “Can you show us the sword I keep seeing in my dreams? I’ve been having that dream more often lately. I feel it’s important.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “Remind me again of the place you saw it.”

  “All right. It was under a ruined foundation of a castle on a hillside overlooking the ocean on the southern coast. Recently I’ve been seeing a city in the distance with red, tiled roofs that sits on the seaside. Sorry, not much to go on there,” Bran said.

  I tried to picture the sword itself first and got nothing but white mist in response. I tried to widen the scope of my search to include the ruined fortress, but still got white mist. I tried a different approach. I tried to see the whole world and was rewarded by a view of Aldon and all the seas around it before the world stopped in darkness. I brought the picture closer to the land on the southern shore of the continent and started scanning the coastline for cities. I scanned from Grunbar in the west to the southwest along the coast. A couple of cities went by before I saw one with red roof tiles. I stopped there.

  “Yes! That’s it! I recognize the castle in the center,” Bran said. “Try looking uphill and a little to the east or northeast from there.”

  I pulled the perspective back. I was starting to get a headache. I scanned in the direction Bran indicated and found a set of ruins on a mountainside just as Bran described. It looked like nothing was left of it from the first floor and up. There were only flagstones covered with debris and dirt remaining. I changed the angle a little and found a partially collapsed staircase in the southern part of the foundation that looked to go downward to a basement level. I pushed forward with difficulty and saw a large chamber beyond the staircase that had many arches built in it to support the ceiling. The floor here was of flagstone, and there was absolutely no debris inside a circle area of the floor, as if the room was still in use, but only in that certain area. Close to the center, there was another circle of about twenty feet in diameter where a lot of debris was in a low pile. The cleaned circle stopped about ten feet short of the staircase. I moved the view through the room with mounting difficulty but saw no sign of the sword anywhere. I stopped my scanning of this area to rest and rubbed my temples a bit.

  “That’s the place. I think the sword’s in the middle of the basement. Hey, you all right?” Bran asked.

  “Yeah. Give me a minute,” I said, letting go of the magic, causing the image to disappear. “This is harder than it looks.” The pain went away slowly after the magic was released.

  “That was it, all right,” Bran said excitedly. “It looked like it was a very long way from here, though.”

  “Yeah, that was all the way across the Flamecrest Mountains, and down a spur to the sea,” Mira said. “It would take two months just to walk there if the land was flat, which it isn’t. There’s a whole mountain range between Stonekeep and there.”

  “What if I could use the throne in conjunction with the portal here and get us there instantly?” I asked. “It seems to me it’s possible, but I think it’s a one-way ride.”

  “What about the way back?” Elle asked. “That land is bordered by Grunbar to the northwest, and the ogres there are known to prey upon everything that passes by. We’d either have to hike across the mountains or take a ship to the east and around the continent that way.”

  “The Terrans have tunnels through the Flamecrest Mountains, but I’ve no idea if they go that far,” Bran said. “Maybe we can talk to Hamot.”

  “Too bad we can’t fly,” Mira said.

  “We’ll think of something,” I said. “At the very least, we’ll have all the time in the world once we’re done with our military service. If we can get there using a portal, we can use the money we got from the goblins to buy passage back.”

  “I’m sure a solution will present itself,” Elle said kindly, patting Bran’s arm.

  I had something else I wanted to try. Reaching out to the magic of the throne, I focused my concentration on finding Kromwell. Suddenly an image snapped into view of a man in demonic looking red armor like the suit Sivash Surekeel wore. The man was riding on some kind of armored beast that was vaguely horse shaped but was larger and had horns. I expanded the viewpoint, and gasped. He was at the head of an army of ogres and goblins that was many thousands strong. They were marching to war.

  “Holy flyspecks!” I said.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Mira asked.

  “It’s Kromwell, all right.” I tried to expand the point of view further and found that the army was moving out of Grunbar in the direction of Fellton. It was probably a week or two away from that city.

  “Looks like he’s been busy over the past few years,” Bran said grimly. “How’d he get into an army?”

  “He’s leading that army himself, not just marching alongside it! How’d he gain control over an ogrish army?” Mira asked in disbelief.

  Moving the perspective around, I said, “That looks like at least fifty or sixty thousand troops, and they’re marching east into human lands. Armies are slow. How long will it take him to get here, I wonder?”

  “Are you sure he’s coming here?” Elle asked.

  “You know Kromwell,” I said. “I beat him to a pulp, and then we killed his father when they were trying to take over Stonekeep. I’m guessing he took that personally.” I purposely left out what happened to Juleen at his father’s hands.

  “Yeah, he’s definitely coming here to kill us all,” Bran said.

  I let go of the scrying enchantment and rubbed my aching temples. “We need to bring this to dad right away. He’ll know what to do.” I picked up the mace from my lap and got off of the throne.

  “You’re right. Let’s get back to the house,” Bran said. “I’m getting a little hungry anyway.”

  “You’re always hungry,” Mira said.

  We retraced out steps back through the portals to the rooftop of the keep. With everyone holding on, I whooshed everyone to a rooftop a block away from the keep, and then again to an alley I knew of on the way home.

  “I think we’re on foot from here. I’m dead tired,” I said.

  “I would think so. You almost died today, after all,” Mira reminded me.

  “You didn’t need to remind me,” I said.

  “She’s just worried about you,” Elle said with an arched brow at Mira.

  “Am not,” Mira said defensively.

  We walked the rest of the way back. It looked like we had another two hours of daylight left and then we’d have to report to the keep for duty. When we got back to the house, the family was spending quality time in the living room by the kitchen. I could see the relief in father’s eyes when he saw us enter the room from the steps. That relief faded when he saw our expressions.

  “What is it?” Dortham asked. Conversation in the room stopped.

  Bran said, “We got into the keep. There’s a room there with a magical throne that allowed Jeron to spy on Kromwell. Kromwell’s at the head of an ogrish army over fifty thousand strong, and they’re marching in this direction.”

  “That qualifies as the worst news I’ve heard recently,” Dortham said. “Where was the army exactly?”

  “Leaving Grunbar on their way to Fellton,” I said. “I’m guessing they’re a couple weeks away from there. It’s hard to be sure without seeing how far they can march in a day.”

  “Great. Just great. When they get here will depend a lot on whether they sack or lay siege to any other cities on the way. They could go straight east from Fellton to Indigo, on the coast of the Blue Bay, just two week’s march from Mithram. Or they could avoid those two cities and stay inland, skirting the Flamecrest Mountains past Aerie and go straight east to hit us here. Ogre armies move very slowly, and usually only at night, but they’re like locusts, devouring everything in their path. They have shelter from the sun in Grunbar, but less in human lands, so scouting will take some time. If they come straight here, they could be here in two or three months. If they stop to lay siege to Fellton, Aerie or Indigo, they could be here in six months to a year. It doesn’t give us much time to prepare.”

  “How many troops does Stonekeep have?” Bran asked.

  “We have a thousand and can levee another ten thousand or so. We have a thousand of Mithram’s soldiers here, too. Realistically, only half of Stonekeep’s militia will be fully armed and armored. Mithram will not empty their city of warriors, so we really can’t expect more than five thousand troops from the king. They’re the more tempting target and will keep the bulk of their army close,” Dortham said.

  “Knowing Kromwell, he won’t turn his army loose on other cities until he hits this place first,” Bran said. “He really hates us, especially you.”

  “We don’t have the numbers to break a siege against fifty or sixty thousand troops,” Dortham said. “We need help. I can talk to Hamot, but the Terrans usually stick to their mountain fortresses for obvious reasons.”

  “What about mercenaries?” I asked. “A recruiter for the Grimguard is here in town.”

  “The town doesn’t have the money to hire them,” Dortham said, shaking his head. “The prince keeps the tax money he gets from Stonekeep and leaves us just enough to fill the potholes and maintain what we currently have. We’d have to find the Pirate King’s treasure to afford a mercenary company,” he said grimly.

  “Maybe Warsong Keep will send some heavy cavalry,” Bran said hopefully.

  “I’ll suggest that the council send emissaries to find out. That is, after we come up with a plausible story on how we found out about the invasion. In the meantime, I think a good meal’s in order,” Dortham said. “Are we about ready with the food, dear?”

  “We’re putting the last of it on the table now, dear,” Nora said affectionately. She and Juleen were carrying the last bowls over as she said it.

  We all gathered at the table for round two of our feasting today. I was a lot hungrier than normal and there was plenty of food to go around, so I stuffed myself to the gills. Talk at the dinner table was pretty sparse, though. Juleen didn’t say much to anyone since her abduction those years ago, but that was normal for her now. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts. With about an hour to spare before sundown, I got up from the table.

  “It’s about time to get back to the keep,” I said. “Thanks for the dinner, mom. Thanks to you too, Samirah and Juleen. Everything was very good.”

  Reluctantly, Bran, Elle and Mira stood also and gave their thanks. Everyone else got up to give hugs and offer farewells. In a few moments the four of us were out the door. I started walking to the keep by a different path.

  “Jeron, the keep is that way,” Bran said.

  “Yeah, but the favorite tavern of the soldiers that defend the keep is this way. I want to see if Relina is at the Rusted Cutlass. We should at least see what it would cost to hire her army,” I said.

  The others looked at each other dubiously but kept their peace. The tavern was just up the street on the right, about a block from the keep. We walked in the door to find the tavern was doing a very good business tonight. In the corner there were three musicians playing a jaunty tune on the drum, lute and flute. Men and women both were talking, drinking, and having a good time. They definitely had the look of local soldiers enjoying their time off. There was a certain stiffness of the spine of the patrons that gave it away. Well, that and the fact nearly everyone carried an arming sword in addition to a belt knife.

  I paused close to the door to have a look around. Two members of our talon were at the bar, Brotlan and Trevic. As I scanned the patrons looking for Relina, I made eye contact with Brotlan, who waved hello. I waved back. He turned to Trevic, pointed to us, and then held his hand out. Trevic saw us, grinned ruefully, and then handed Brotlan a silver coin. I finally saw Relina in a corner booth drinking beer with two sergeants if my memory served me. I walked over with Bran, Elle and Mira trailing behind. Elle looked very uncomfortable here, so I decided to make this fast.

  “Hello, Relina,” I said cheerfully.

  Relina choked a little bit on her beer, she was so surprised to see me. “Um, hi!” she said after the fit had passed. “Hey, can I get you four a round of beers?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “Listen, I was wondering what it would cost to retain your services.”

  “I don’t do private parties anymore, but I think I could make time,” Relina said coyly.

  “Aye, she’s worth any price, man,” one of the sergeants said.

  “Um, I’m not… I mean I was talking about your mercenary company. What would it take to retain the Grimguard for a time?” I asked.

  “Five thousand royals a month plus rights to the spoils for five thousand men. Wait, are you serious? Do you have that kind of money squirreled away somewhere?” Relina asked.

  “No, not yet. Armor smithing isn’t that lucrative,” I said. “I was just curious. Thanks for your time, Relina.”

  “Any time, Master Smith,” Relina said thoughtfully. She briefly looked troubled when we turned and walked out. If only she knew. Well, she’d find out soon enough.

  I headed down the street on a parallel course to the keep, then slipped into an alley. The others looked at me quizzically and waited for me to speak my mind.

  “I have an idea. It was something dad said. What if we really could find the Pirate King’s treasure? What if it was enough to hire the mercenaries we need to man the walls when the horde gets here?” I asked.

  “You can’t be serious. That book is fiction, Jeron,” Bran said.

  “Yeah, but sometimes reality is the basis for fiction. Every history book is proof of that,” I said.

  “How very cynical of you,” Mira said with a guffaw.

  “The Pirate King was a real person, even if the stories are made up. He was clever, too. Maybe he somehow escaped the death curse that Ithion cast on him. Even if he didn’t, he probably hid most of his wealth away at his secret hideout. How much can one person spend? Some of it has to be left. Now we have the means to search the Sunset Islands on the edge of the world without even leaving town. Surely, it’s worth taking a peek. We have a half an hour left until we have to report. Aren’t you curious?”

  “What a brainless idea,” Bran said. “Everything you just said was based on the fabrications of a drunken bard.”

  “Sounds pretty desperate,” Elle said. Even when she completely disagreed with someone, she was nice about it. Bran knew how lucky he was, too. Boy, was I jealous.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to take a peek,” Mira said.

  “I just want to look. We have time, and who wants to face death by ogre? Did you have a good time in the cave, Bran? Isn’t any crazy idea worth a look in consideration of what’s coming?”

  “You have a point. I don’t think you’re right, but I’d be glad to admit being wrong if it can get us the Grimguard,” Bran said.

  “So, who’s in?” I asked. I knew full well that if I could convince Bran, then I had Elle’s support also.

  “Why the heck not?” Mira asked. “It’s not the craziest idea you’ve had. Maybe the dumbest, but not the craziest.” Bran had to nod at that.

  “All right then. On me,” I said before they could change their minds.

  The others laid a hand on my shoulders and I whooshed everyone up to the top of the keep. We went through the portals, passing the two portals we hadn’t explored yet, and went straight to the throne room. It only took a couple of minutes to get there. I sat back down in the Amber Throne, as I liked to call it in my mind, and concentrated on finding the Sunset Isles.

  I conjured a vision of them from very high up. There was still plenty of light out there to see by. I looked around the group of islands and noted how treacherous the water was. The islands were right next to the edge of the world, and in some cases actually touched the crystal barrier protecting Aldon from the void. There were deep channels between sharp spikes of rocks filling the sea there. No wonder the Pirate King chose that spot for his hideout. A captain would have to be crazy to take a warship in there. I focused on the islands closest to the edge of the world, looking for ruins. I went over the whole thing from a great height, bit by bit, and I found the ruins of a foundation overlooking the ocean close to a cliff. The building had collapsed a long time ago except for one wall, and there were still roof and floor tiles littering the ground.

  “That has to be it,” I said. “Has anyone else ever lived in the Sunset Isles?”

  “No one I’ve ever heard of,” Bran said. “Not even pirates. It’s too far from anything else, and I don’t see any fields where crops were grown.”

  I focused the vision closer to the ground and saw something move. I moved the point of view closer and was shocked to see it was a walking skeleton. Walking? I moved the point of view around and saw there were more of them that I couldn’t see from high up. The island was literally crawling with undead in various states of decay. They all had a sickly green light in their eye sockets.

  Bran shook his head. I looked at the others. Seeing the reluctance in their eyes, I knew better than to ask. I ended the vision and sat there in the throne for a bit, thinking.

  “There were hundreds of undead things there, just walking around in full daylight. That’s pretty bad,” I said. I didn’t add much hope to my voice, as I knew that they would say, but I said it anyway. “We’ve fought undead before, if you recall.”

  “Not a chance,” Mira said. She did not have fond memories of Lord Surekeel’s attempted insurrection and the undead he’d used to bring it about.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “Let’s just get to the barracks before we’re late.”

  I descended from the dais and held out my hand. Once everyone was holding onto my arm, I used magic to transport us out of the keep, back to the alley. It didn’t work. I tried again, focusing harder. The magic wouldn’t work.

  “It won’t work here,” I said.

  “Your transportation magic?” Mira asked.

  “Yeah. Like something’s blocking it.”

  “It works on the roof,” Mira said.

  “It can never be too easy, can it?” Bran asked sarcastically.

  “It’s still better than walking all the way back,” Elle said. She always saw the bright side of things. It’s one of the things we all liked most about her.

  We walked back out of the keep in silence. Once we got to the rooftop, I whooshed us back to the alley, and we finished walking back to the keep through the barbican and entered the barracks.

  “The curse is real. Maybe the treasure’s still there,” I said hopefully while sitting on my bunk. We kept our voices low for fear of being overheard.

  “No way am I going to the edge of the world to an island crawling with undead for a little bit of money,” Mira said matter-of-factly.

  “Looks way too dangerous, Jeron,” Elle said. Then she hid her face with her hands. “Oh, those poor souls.”

  With a thoughtful look on his face, Bran said, “What about the sword, though? I see in my dream that it’s a powerful and holy weapon. And we have Jeron’s talents, too. It may be possible to get there and find his treasure without getting swarmed.”

  “Now you’re considering it, too?” Mira asked. “Idiocy must be contagious.”

  “Let’s see what your dad can come up with,” Elle said, using a different tack.

  “Look, a lot’s happened today,” I said. “Let’s sleep on it. Our doom won’t reach us tonight. Probably,” I said with a yawn. But the doom is coming, I reminded myself. A lot of people would die very soon if we did nothing. Despite my fatigue, it was a long time before I could finally find sleep that night.

  -----

  Captain Safarac squirmed in his chair in the suite the Warleader occupied in Stonekeep Castle. Councilor Goodman, Warleader of Stonekeep, sat opposite him and drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair. They had been reading reports while they waited there for a special report, but the expected messenger had not yet come.

  “Something went wrong,” the captain said.

  “You’re right. They should’ve reported by now,” the councilor said.

  “What the hell’s going on? First, we find a true priestess and a paladin, and they fight their way out of a crushing ambush, then we find they had a damned sorcerer with them that we knew absolutely nothing about. The hunt for the sorcerer should have ended hours ago. Now they’re probably at home enjoying cake or something while we plot in vain. How could we have mishandled this?” The captain got up and moved around the room, his knees sometimes bending backwards and his face losing its features.

  “Mind yourself. The door’s not locked,” the councilor said.

  The captain pulled himself together. Literally. “There were eight of us! Eight! No one’s ever survived an attack like that.”

  “I didn’t feel any noteworthy magic being used,” the councilor mused.

  “Neither did I. I think the Smith boy’s not nearly as powerful or dangerous as his progenitors, or we would have sensed his use of magic when our trap was sprung,” the captain said.

  “He must’ve gotten lucky. Maybe he eluded our assassins somehow. They may still report.”

  “If we’re as lucky as he seems to be, he’ll have drunk the poisoned wine by now. Maybe his whole family did, and they’re all dead, and our brothers are still eating the corpses.”

  “Too many maybes,” the councilor said. “He’s young, and certainly untutored. There’s no one left who could teach him. He’ll be unable to protect the city from the approaching doom.”

  “Speaking of that, will you send word to Aerie about the failures of our minions to kill the Smiths?” the captain asked, being sure to emphasize the word “minions.”

  “Not until we have something good to report,” the councilor said. “We don’t want the First to think of us as anything less than completely reliable.”

  “Yes, that’s probably wise. Forgive me.”

  “Still. Our brethren should have reported their success by now, and that worries me.” The councilor drummed his fingers on his armrest as he thought. “We have allies in Mithram. They may be able to help us succeed without notifying the First of our… difficulties. Go to the temple at Mithram and report our findings. Recruit them if you can.”

  “As you command. We could attack them here in the keep while they sleep, you know.”

  “It’s not worth the risk. I have more damage I can do while in command here, but I can’t do those things if my true nature is revealed. No, I think our work here is almost done. The army Karnas raised will surely crush this city with alacrity. His force is half the size of Stonekeep’s population, and there’s nothing the prince’s meager forces can do to prevent their demise. I so eagerly await the carnage… The chance to feed as much as I want…” Councilor Goodman’s face suddenly turned into a giant, flesh-rending beak with a squirming, tentacle-like tongue.

  “Now who needs to control themself?” The captain asked rhetorically.

  The councilor hissed softly, but his features once again became set in his human guise. “For appearances, I’ll be going to Mithram myself when the time is right.”

  “I’ll see you in Mithram, then. I hear the temple’s work there goes according to plan,” Captain Safarac said smugly.

  Councilor Goodman laughed. “Indeed, it does. It’ll be good for us to expand our control.”

  The captain stood, bowed and left. Their plans were unchallenged, and both Xerith knew that the Dominion would come. The councilor locked the door after him, then his form flowed freely between tentacles, animal’s limbs, wings, and human limbs with great agitation for a short while. The changes slowed eventually, then stopped on something only vaguely humanoid with the councilor’s face. It grinned with a look of calculating evil.