‘He told me that if he didn’t show in fifteen minutes thenHeteronymous would know what to do. It’s already been half anhour.’
‘Can you change shape to a flying horse Quab. How would youlike to bear me up into the sky so that I can show the Lady’sdispleasure.’ asked Heteronymous. ‘You’ll also get a good view aswell.’
‘I’d be honoured, My Lord.’ replied Quab.
‘Let’s do this! Alert all the druids to take to the airplease.’ he said to a nearby druid assistant who dashed off withthe message.
Quab changedshape to a beautiful white flying horse and took to the air bearingthe old High Druid.
‘Take me a league out to sea please Quab.’ ShoutedHeteronymous.
Quab flew outwondering what Heteronymous had in mind. Some type of storm hepresumed. Heteronymous loved attacking with ice and lightning.Perhaps he was going to create a tornado as well. That wouldcertainly be spectacular but he was starting to have somemisgivings about this. They had saved all the townspeople. Whyattack the invaders now?
The dragon hadburned the commercial teleporter building as well as most of thebuildings down and harassed the army for a while before leaving.They had no ships and it would be foolish to send an army over thewater anyway. The invaders would soon discover that the jungle wasunforgiving and without the help of druids, extremely dangerous. Ifnecessary a few druids could harass them and make life unbearableuntil they left.
‘What was Featherdown thinking? What had he asked Heteronymousto do and why?’ Quab asked himself.
Heteronymousasked Quab to hover over the sea and began chanting. It was thelongest and most powerful spell that Quab had ever heard. The smellof magic surrounded them, the sky began to darken, lightningcrackled and the wind began to stir. Heteronymous chanted on. Hecalled for the immense power of the sea to rise up and strike!
‘By the Lady!’ thought Quab.
‘He’s creating a tsunami! He’ll totally destroy the Unity ofWisdom army in one go. That’ll have huge repercussions. All thegods will want vengeance. Featherdown has gone mad. If the Time ofChaos is not yet upon us then this could start it.’
The godswatched in great anticipation.
Quab dovestraight down towards the sea. Heteronymous was still chanting whenthey hit the water and went under. The chanting stopped and thepower forming the tsunami dissipated.. Quab changed to his Newmanform and swam to the surface. Heteronymous first changed form to aseal and then back to his Newman form as he surfaced near Quab.
‘By the Lady! Have you gone mad Quab!’ yelledHeteronymous.
‘No. You and Featherdown have. I hope I’ve just stopped thestart of the Time of Chaos!’
‘By the Ever Loving Grace of the Lady! There is sanity left inthis world yet!’ yelled R’ptor the Air Spirit.
‘Your friend Quab has saved you. You will not need thesanctuary of the Lady now. Go to your cloned body and accept yourfate.’
Moments laterFeatherdown felt his spirit flow into his cloned body and he wokeup.
‘Welcome, to your new body Archwizard Featherdown.’ said avoice into his mind.
‘You are very lucky I was chosen for this mission. My name isSlivver and I bring news of Aquitain and Miranda.’
Chapter 27 Return toAstaria
On passing through thegateway from the Elendari palace, Miranda with scimitar in hand,Yllandril on her shoulder and Aquitain dangling from the mind claynecklace found herself standing at the end of a dark tunnel. Themagically enhanced scimitar gave out a weak purple glow, enough tosee that the tunnel had a perfect circular cross section. Aquitainused his power to control light to amplify the brightness andchange the colour of the light emanating from the scimitar blade toa bright white and it immediately became apparent that the tunnelwall was completely coated with small grey hexagonal tiles.
‘Place me on the ground please Miranda.’ said Aquitain and shedid wondering what he was up to.
He lookedclosely at the tiles and used his crystal vision to examine themand the mortar between them.
‘These tiles would explain why we couldn’t find the otherpathways when I was in Astaria before. They are used in Panmagicato block magic from passing through. They would effectively stopanyone from another part of Astaria teleporting or even scryinginto here and vice versa.’
He looked onthe wall behind them and saw that a portion of the wall was coveredin larger black tiles and these held the magical runes that formedthe permanent gateway.
‘These tiles would have cost a small fortune. Someone went toa lot of trouble and expense to build this tunnel. I wonderwhy?’
‘Let’s find out.’ said Miranda picking him up and attachinghim to her necklace as she strode off down the tunnel. They walkedabout 200 paces and Miranda suddenly stopped.
‘I ... I think that there’s something ahead, just out ofsight.’ she said. ‘I can feel it. It’s cold andhorrible.’
Moments later along, thin finger of blackness shot out of the darkness ahead andtouched her on the forehead. Miranda screamed and ran back towardsthe gateway in terror, dropping her scimitar as she did. It fellclattering on the tile floor with a loud metallic ring that echoedback and forth in the tunnel. She didn’t stop until she had passedthrough the gate, and reached the wall opposite the gate in thePalace. She stood with her back to the wall looking terrified atthe gate and breathing heavily.
After a coupleof minutes, Aquitain finally managed to sooth her enough mentally,to find out what had happened.
‘It was horrible. It touched me and I was suddenly in anightmare that I had when I was small where a black shadow-likething would chase me, threatening to do terrible things to me. Inmy dreams I could always outrun it but the thought of it catchingme has always terrified me.’ replied Miranda.
‘I was afraid of this. It seems that one of our enemies hassome ability to manipulate both dreams and the dream world.Granddad sent messages though dreams and I heard he could do otherstuff as well. I didn’t get into your dream by accident the othernight, Katarina helped me to get there, expecting that I would finda way to find you and get past Ironwood’s protective ward. Someoneelse followed me past the ward then attacked both of us.Fortunately we won,
