Kairu and Rita stepped back, Kairu instinctively raising his sword, though he knew against such a monster it was useless. Hector lifted his head, wiped his face, and also stared at the flying machine.

  The enormous craft hovered in the air just above the ground, a few dozen feet away. Flames burst from beneath its wings, metal landing gear slid out from its belly, and within seconds it settled softly onto the grass, its roar fading away. Kairu stood frozen, spellbound. He could not tear his eyes from the sight, such as he had never witnessed before—he forgot everything else.

  In the silence that followed, round doors opened smoothly on either side of the machine, white stairways slid down to the ground by themselves, and figures spilled out—dressed in black suits, round black helmets, carrying black rectangular devices in their hands.

  "Kairu!" Petros yanked his shoulder, breaking his trance. He turned.

  "I don’t think we should talk to these people, and I don’t think we’ll understand each other," Petros said quietly. "So I suggest we go back and close the passage."

  "And Hector?"

  "We’ve done all we could. The choice is his now."

  Kairu cast one last look at the boy, who too sat frozen on the ground, watching as the men in black helmets stepped out of the flying machine, and began walking toward them. There was something magical in how they looked, in their movements, something almost entrancing, and at the same time threatening. Kairu suddenly realized these people were to be feared.

  "Run," he said, and they turned and bolted.

  Just before the crossroads, he looked back one last time. He saw the blue sky, drenched in white sunlight, the shining white city in the valley below his feet… And he saw Hector running after them. And behind him, quickly closing the distance, came the black-helmeted men. Kairu suddenly realized the rectangular devices in their hands were weapons.

  Then came the leap through time, the rainbow whirl, the shimmer before his eyes, the passing of seasons, of generations, the tumble down the scale of time. Then he spilled out of the portal into a dark clearing. Above him was a black, starless sky. Before the crossroads, lying on the ground, was the Octarus. And a few dozen yards away, from the forest, came screaming druids, waving torches, swords, spears, and maces.

  Kairu managed to duck and snatch up the time machine, and at the same instant, an arrow hissed over his head. He grabbed Rita’s hand as she stepped out after him, and they sprinted aside, away from both the crossroads of time and the howling, bloodthirsty mob. Petros tumbled out of the portal third, at once swinging his staff, and a sparkling blue orb flew into the druids, scattering the front ranks.

  "Kairu, close the crossroads!" Petros shouted, charging after them.

  Kairu turned. Fear gripped him: he had never done this before… Holding the Octarus in his hands, he stumbled backward, trying to focus on the portal before him, trying to find in his mind and in the device the right buttons, or the right strings. Rita was already at his side, loosing arrows at the attackers to cover him. Petros stood beside them too, striking with another spell, then another. Their aiming was precise, but the druids pressed in on a wide front, trying to encircle them.

  "Well?!" Petros cried.

  And in that moment, out of the crossroads of time, as if scalded, Hector burst forth, sprinting headlong away from the advancing horde, and behind him poured the men in black helmets. These, seeing the druids, did not run. Instead, they raised their devices to their shoulders, as Kairu would a musket. Thin red beams slashed the darkness, red dots racing across the grass and tree trunks.

  There was a first quiet click, and a druid, already rushing toward the crossroads with a broadsword, suddenly stumbled as if tripped and fell face-first. Then another dropped, then a third. Red dots picked their silhouettes out of the darkness. Each time there was only a single click—and where the red dot had rested, a crimson bullet wound blossomed.

  The druids answered with a hail of arrows and rune-spells. Several black helmets fell, but the rest instantly began to spread out across the clearing, firing even more intensely. The druids advancing with cold steel slowed, then stopped. Then they broke and ran. Only archers and mages remained, hiding behind the trees.

  And then the air blazed bright blue. Kairu shielded his eyes from the blinding light. The next instant, a furious gust of wind knocked him, Rita, and Petros to the ground, sprawling in the grass. Squinting as hard as he could, tears running down his face, Kairu at last managed to make out a colossal white flying machine bursting out of the crossroads. It soared upward, and pillars of cold, brilliant light flooded the clearing.

  The black helmets pressed the attack. The sweeping beams of the flying machine’s searchlights slid across the thicket, dragging the silhouettes of hiding druids out of the dark. And instantly, the red dots found them. Shots rang out, and they dropped with only muffled cries. Bushes snapped and cracked beneath their lifeless bodies. The black helmets advanced into the woods, while the flying machine above roared and drifted slowly forward, vanishing behind the treetops. Another minute—and the clearing, littered with corpses, sank back into darkness, lit only by the dim glow of the moon.

  "Damn," Rita breathed. "That was… something."

  "Kairu," Petros said quietly. "Close this damned portal already."

  Kairu slowly rose to his feet. Then he shut his eyes, focusing on the patch of space before him. He found the two temporal points he himself had fused together not half an hour ago. Now, with no need to rush, he realized suddenly there was nothing complicated about it. A small exertion of will, and the points split apart, the thread of time straightened. The Octarus flared with a flash of blue light, and the sparks vanished from the air, the ripple disappeared. The Gates of Elysium were closed forever.

  "Without them, we wouldn’t have gotten away," Kairu said, slowly tucking the Octarus into his tunic. "So it all worked out for the best… Where’s Hector?" He glanced around.

  "He ran," Rita reported. "Took off as fast as he could. By now, he’s probably somewhere in the forest."

  "Are we going to try to find him?"

  "No need," Petros said. "If he’s got any sense—and I think he does—he’ll hole up somewhere and wait until this whole mess is over. Today we did a very good thing. We gave him a chance. Now his fate lies in his own hands."

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  "Kairu," Rita said. "Didn’t he remind you of someone…?"

  "Yes," Kairu said, stunned. "Yes, I was going to ask you the same. So it wasn’t my imagination. Hector Saelin looked exactly like a young Natall Ganstair."

  He turned his gaze on Petros.

  "And now," he said, "it’s time for an explanation. While there’s still time—because soon it will be too late. You’ll tell us why you’re here, and we’ll tell you the same."

  Petros smiled. This time, his smile was cold and hard.

  "I’ve been here a long while," he said. "I arrived through another crossroads two years ago. And all this time I’ve been hiding, watching this expedition… We don’t have much time—we must hurry. So it’s very fortunate you came here—I need helpers. Rita, I have a request for you… Somewhere down the path, I left Axel. He was supposed to cover me, but of course, neither of us expected a real battle to break out. Please, if he hasn’t gone—find him and bring him here."

  "You’re joking?" Rita gasped, but a wild joy flickered in her eyes. "My father… here? But… I… I mean… if he sees me…"

  "He doesn’t know you yet," Petros smirked. "And when he does, many years later, he’ll understand. I’ll explain it to him later. Go on, run!"

  Rita nodded slowly, still dazed, and darted into the darkness. Petros turned to Kairu.

  "Come on, up the slope. Now that it’s come to the end, I have only one thing left. To kill one man."

  "What a coincidence," Kairu said with a crooked smile. "We’re here for the same reason."

  ***

  "He was here," Garamant muttered, lifting his eyes to the impassive face of the stone Vaimos. "Fool. I’m sure by now he’s gone looking for the main entrance to Scarlet’s tomb—and quite possibly, he’s found it…"

  "Are we going there too?" Nubel fidgeted nervously beside him, shifting from foot to foot.

  "Absolutely not. We mustn’t repeat his mistake. On that side, Maclevirr and his men are waiting for him. But if I know anything about the architecture of these shrines, there must be another exit—through it, in theory, the Seer who passes the trial should emerge. And we’ll try to enter through that same exit—and find ourselves immediately in the place where the Octarus is kept. That’s where we’ll meet Petros and Vergilius when they come out with their prize."

  "Garamant," Nubel muttered.

  "What is it?" The Nocturn cast him an absent glance. Nubel scowled, looking up.

  "Are you going to kill him?"

  "Of course," the lord answered, a little surprised. "He’s done his task. He led me to the Octarus. I don’t need him anymore."

  "There’s still Darius… Wouldn’t it be better to let him find both artifacts?" Nubel stammered slightly. "And besides… we never agreed on this."

  "Nubel!" Garamant said coldly. He stepped up to Nubel, laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, and looked him straight in the eyes.

  "Do you understand this is our only chance? Do you understand how dangerous Petros is? He should never have gotten out of Regerlim. And yet here he is. Someone is helping him—diabolically—and that someone could later stop us from reaching Darius. And we will reach it, sooner or later. But Petros must be removed from the path."

  He shook the professor and lowered his voice, speaking now with the coaxing tone of a man persuading a child.

  "Nubel, you can become the next Archmage. And you can change the Academy. Petros’s time, and that of men like him—it’s over. Once we have Darius and the Octarus, a new life will begin in Aktida. The Kingdom of Aktida, this Empire of Evil, where only the alven have a place and all other peoples drag out a slave’s existence, will fall, it will be destroyed. We will build a new world. And all of this is just one step away. And that step is to eliminate the one man who can stop it…"

  Nubel opened his mouth, but never got the chance to answer. Deep in the forest gloom, between the ancient pines, lights flickered and harsh, uneven cries rang out. The professor and the lord instantly raised their hands, readying battle-magic, and stepped back, pressing their shoulders against the pedestal of the stone Vaimos. And the next second, arrows whistled over their heads, splintering into the trees and chipping marble dust from the statue.

  Through the thorny brush burst a maddened horde of druids, among whom fought warriors of the Lynx Clan and the Wolf Clan, while above them pressed the black-helmeted strangers, methodically gunning down anyone who fell into their sights.

  Nubel thrust his hands forward, hurling a fireball at the nearest druids. Garamant joined him, and a freezing wind swept across the ground, flinging several druids backward into the legs of their own comrades. But new ones appeared at once to take their place. The smell of burning drifted from afar, and behind the trees, fireflies of forest fire appeared. Nubel cast another spell and, unable to endure the storm of arrows any longer, darted aside, escaping the deadly hail. Garamant hunched down behind the statue, not even daring to lean out to cast another spell.

  Another flash of blinding blue light, and Nubel, having scrambled up to the bushes higher on the slope, struck from there. The clearing was filling rapidly with fighting druids, and Garamant, swearing, dashed after Nubel. Someone’s spell struck a dead, dry pine, and its trunk burst into flames, blazing like a giant torch and illuminating the clearing, and the impassive Vaimos. Higher up the slope, the forest caught fire, and from there all the combatants fled in panic, still trying to kill one another on the way down but, for the most part, fleeing from the fire—and from the earth itself. The ground rumbled dully, massive boulders came crashing down from the mountain’s peak, and rolled down the slope. The path upward was cut off.

  "Garamant! This way!" Nubel cried weakly, crouching in the bushes. And then he froze, struck motionless as if by lightning.

  White light flared behind the trees, a steady rumble rose, and in the sky appeared a flying machine. A deafening crack sounded, orange sparks glimmered beneath its wings. Pine branches crashed down, chopped by the dense volleys of bullets. The bodies of druids fell to the ground.

  Seeing all this, Nubel, terrified to the point of losing consciousness, decided he’d had enough. He wasn’t going to play the hero any longer. The time had come to save his own life and escape this hell.

  Garamant was still slowly retreating across the clearing, his head thrown back, staring at the machine drifting out from behind the trees. He raised his hands in a sign and hurled a fireball at it, but missed. Nubel wasn’t about to wait and see if he’d get another chance. The scholar turned and ran. Just before diving into the bushes, Nubel glanced back, and suddenly saw—or maybe only thought he saw—on the other side of the clearing, in the chaos of the fight, amid arrows and fireballs flying erratically, the lanky figure of Saelin in a black suit. Aok was covering him, and he was clearly headed for the very place everyone else was fleeing from in panic—upward, toward the crater.

  Saelin ran low to the ground, gasping desperately for breath, waves of raw terror rushing down his spine, adrenaline pounding in his temples. Gunfire rattled all around him. A druid suddenly leaped out a few feet away. For a moment, their eyes met. Saelin saw the mad fire in the forest-dweller’s gaze, saw the broadsword raised to strike. And then came the burst of gunfire. The druid jerked and spasmed like a puppet in the hands of a clumsy puppeteer, his mouth twisting in a final cry, before collapsing face-first in the grass, almost striking Saelin. Black, bloody stains spread across his back. Saelin froze for only an instant, then snapped out of it and kept running.

  He clawed his way upward, tearing dead grass with his hands, scraping his elbows on thorny shrubs, feeling the slope grow ever steeper. But there was no other way. Only forward. Over his head, the dry pine branches blazed, the air shimmered with heat, smoke stung his eyes, the earth shook as if to topple him, but he no longer thought of saving his own life. He was trying to find Hector amid this chaos. Or at least his body.

  And then the trees suddenly parted, and he stumbled out into open ground, covered with stone, fantastically shaped boulders, and long black tongues of hardened lava.

  Saelin raised his eyes and saw a trail winding through the labyrinth of rocks and fissures, leading upward, to the black rim of the crater, above which a dark column of smoke slowly rose into the cloud-choked night sky, lit by fiery bursts. Around him, the forest burned, rocks tumbled downward—but suddenly he burst out laughing like a madman and staggered upward, like a drunk, struggling to keep his balance on the trembling slope.

  There, above, before him, yawned the black mouth of a tunnel leading into the heart of the mountain. At its far end glimmered pale scarlet reflections. They looked like the warm light of a tavern beckoning a weary, lost traveler from the wilderness.