"Petros, calm down… I’ll tell you everything!" the scholar gasped, his eyes wide with terror. Petros looked at him and suddenly realized the frightened creature shrinking in his grip truly had not expected to see them again. To the rest of the expedition, the four of them were dead.

  "It was Konrad!" Nubel burst out. "Konrad! He betrayed us… He forced Axel to take the aerostat away, wanted to leave you to die in the forest… and take everything for himself! I swear it!"

  "Take what?!" Petros spat. "What exactly was he going to keep for himself? The results of the expedition? What the hell would he want with those?"

  "That… what you’re searching for," Nubel swallowed hard. "They… they all knew. Konrad guessed it first, told the rest of us… about the time machine…"

  Petros was silent. Nubel trembled violently, crushed against the wall; already smaller and weaker than Petros, he seemed positively tiny in comparison now.

  "Where are they, Nubel?" Saelin demanded. "Where is Hector? Where are Axel, Ashley, and Konrad?"

  "Konrad, Ashley, and Axel… they went north," Nubel muttered, shrinking even further. "And I… I told them I wanted no part of it! I didn’t believe their talk about that ridiculous machine! I stayed here… we split up just two days ago…"

  "And Hector!" Saelin roared. "Can you at least answer me—where is my son, and what’s become of him?!"

  "The druids…" Nubel exhaled with difficulty.

  Saelin’s face turned to stone.

  "They didn’t kill him!" Nubel cried, staring in panic. "They took him alive—he was needed for something!"

  "Where?" In two bounds, Saelin was on him. "Damn it—" his hands shook, his head whipped wildly about. "Nubel! Do you know where they took him?"

  "N-no…" the scholar whimpered. "I don’t know anything… We just ran… It was the Lynx Clan…"

  "Aok!" Saelin shouted. "You’re a druid! Can we contact the Lynx Clan? I want to know where they’re taking Hector! Can you help me?"

  "That will be difficult," the druid said reluctantly. "Our clan is at odds with them. But, if you have money for bribes… we might negotiate through a neutral clan and try to buy information."

  "Perfect, we’ll do that," Saelin said sharply, his face lighting with sudden hope. "Let’s go. Right now—without wasting a minute… Petros?"

  He turned. The mage stood with his arms folded, frowning.

  "Are you insane?" Saelin understood everything instantly. "You can’t possibly—"

  "We have more important matters," Petros replied, absolutely calm.

  "More important? More important?! Nothing is more important than my son’s life! Do you hear me?! Petros, don’t be a fool! Come with me—this would delay us just a few days! We’ll rescue him and then go to Scarlet’s tomb together! Petros, Octarus has waited two thousand years, it can wait a little longer now!"

  "No. It cannot wait. Axel, Ashley, and Konrad are already there. Axel has my chest. If they know enough to betray me… Saelin, we risk losing Octarus forever. We risk never finding it at all…"

  "You know what?!" Saelin shouted. "I don’t want to hear another word of this madness! For Aktos’s sake, go chase after your time machine! Fine—choke on it for all I care! But not me. No damn way. My son’s life matters more, do you understand? Get lost, Petros! I truly hope you find your precious machine—and then do with it whatever you like!"

  For several seconds, Petros said nothing.

  "Saelin…" he said at last, quietly, almost uncertainly, reaching out a hand. "Saelin… don’t be a fool. We’re friends, and—"

  "Friends?!" Saelin shot back, stepping away. "Friends?! I used to think so, Petros. But now… now I see clearly. A man who doesn’t understand that the life of my only son means more to me than even a time machine—for which I’ve spent nine years searching—who is willing to abandon me at the very moment I need help most, just for some trinket… That man is no friend of mine!"

  Petros’s hand dropped lifelessly.

  "By Aktos, I didn’t want it to come to this," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Listen, Saelin. We’ll meet again before the end. And if you change your mind… I’ll gladly extend my hand once more. But now… farewell."

  Saelin spat.

  "So Vergilius was right," he rasped. "You, Petros—you’re nothing but a greedy swine. I never want to see you again. Vergilius… are you with me?"

  Vergilius froze. Saelin’s eyes burned into him. Petros looked aside.

  "I…" the Nocturn faltered. "I…" and fell silent again.

  "Well?" Saelin snapped grimly.

  "I’ll stay with Petros," Vergilius whispered.

  Saelin said nothing for a long moment.

  "Aok, come on. I asked them as friends. You—if necessary, I’ll make you come by force."

  "That won’t be necessary," the druid answered calmly. "I’ll go with you willingly. Your son is the Chosen. The clan that has taken him could gain unimaginable power. The balance of the Forest would be broken. The Wolf Clan cannot allow that. I will help you."

  "Thank you," Saelin nodded. "I swear, I’ll repay you with everything—everything you ask. Come, Aok."

  He turned and strode first toward the village gates, shoulders hunched, never looking back. Aok nodded and followed. Petros did not watch them go.

  "Why did you do it?" he asked grimly after a pause, turning to Vergilius. "I always thought you disliked me, too. You still have a chance to bow out. You were with me in the shrine. You could return to Aktida, publish your findings, and forget all this like a nightmare."

  "I’ll explain later," the scholar said after a pause. "For now, I’ll only say this: if Konrad and Axel truly want the time machine, then the most important thing now is to stop them."

  Petros nodded.

  "Come on. Time won’t wait for us either. We’ll hire a carriage, ride to Ardrai, and from there head straight to the slopes of the Fire-Breathing Mountain in search of the tomb… You know what, Nubel?" he suddenly asked, almost kindly, turning to the trembling professor. "You’d best go home. I’m grateful for everything you’ve told us. Your part in this is finished."

  "Thank you…" Nubel muttered, clearly stunned by such mercy. "Thank you, Petros…"

  Petros clapped him on the shoulder.

  "Farewell, Nubel. Thank you for waiting for us. I hope we meet again. Come on, Vergilius."

  "You trust him?" Vergilius whispered, once they had walked away from the tavern, leaving Nubel still in shock behind them.

  "Not for a second," Petros replied calmly. "But I hope he has the sense not to get in my way again. If he dares follow me… I’ll have to deal with him too."

  "And what will you do if you find them? Axel, Konrad, Ashley? What will you do to the one who betrayed us?"

  "Force them to confess everything," Petros said, his voice colder than ice. "And then… then the guilty will pay. For everything they’ve done to us. There will be no mercy."

  ***

  That evening, Petros and Vergilius hired a carriage to take them along the human-built road farther north—toward the blue ridge of mountains rising on the horizon beyond the forest, toward Ardrai. The road skirted the woods, so the journey would take several more days. They carried only small travel bags and the muskets with ammunition they had salvaged from the wreck of the airship.

  A couple of hours later, another carriage left Buttlecreek in the same direction. In it sat Nubel.

  Ashley and Konrad, meanwhile, were already two days’ journey southward, heading toward Steiling.

  Saelin and Aok pressed north on foot, straight through the forest.

  Ahead of them by two days traveled Axel, accompanied by a hired guide, a druid from a neutral clan.

  On the evening of June fourteenth, they emerged from the forest’s edge, where the misty slopes of the North-Vaimar ridge rose from the earth. From here, the sharp, solitary peak of the Fire-Breathing Mountain lay about six hours’ walk away. In the distance, at the mountain’s base, hundreds of lights burned in the windows of Ardrai—the city that, in two days, was doomed to die.

  The druid suddenly halted, and in the twilight that cloaked the forest, Axel saw a man step out to meet him.

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  Axel recognized him instantly. And yet, even had it been a ghost standing before him, or Aktos himself in the flesh, Axel could not have been more stunned.

  "Thank you, Axel," the man said warmly, smiling. "Thank you for bringing this chest here. And now, the time has come to open it."

  ***

  He surfaced from half-consciousness.

  Always the same, after the narcotic herbs. At first, everything swam before his eyes, and his head split with pain. What brought him back most of all was the smell: pungent, sharp, stinging his nostrils. Smoke from the fires rose to the sky, twisting into patterns that blurred and shifted, leaving the sensation of hallucinations in waking life. Sounds reached him indistinctly, his limbs ached from long immobility.

  He lay on the ground. As always, with his hands bound; as always, beside a fire, surrounded by druids sitting directly on the ground, muttering to one another in low voices. Around them, firelight danced on the dark trunks of pines whose black crowns stretched up into the starless night. Twigs crackled, something bubbled in kettles, fat hissed on the coals beneath a deer roasting on a spit. Hector stirred, managed to roll onto his side, dragging his bound hands against the dirt, trying to gather his strength and regain some sense of coordination.

  "Wake up," said a druid seated by the fire nearby. "Time. Get up. Man—go farther. Time. Magic night."

  Hector knew him. No explanations had ever been given, but along the way Hector had realized that this man—the one wearing the finest pelts and necklaces—was the leader. All the cannibals obeyed him without question. Only one ever dared contradict him, arguing in their rough, growling tongue. It was the druid who never removed his terrifying bird mask, who wrapped himself in multicolored rags, and carried a staff along with satchels filled with runes and ingredients for his brews. He was the clan’s shaman.

  All of them wore the same mark on their belts: lynx skulls. Of them, only the chieftain spoke the common tongue—and that poorly.

  "Where are you taking me?" Hector rasped, his throat raw.

  He had often tried to question them during the long, exhausting marches through woods, ravines, and valleys, along secret trails known only to these cannibals, the masters of the land. The chieftain always spoke in riddles. He often mentioned some place, a city—judging by the description, a human one—and that gave Hector a shred of hope. They fed him as they fed the others. Plainly, they did not intend to let their prisoner starve.

  "Mountain," the chieftain said, holding out a hairy palm. One of his men shoved a massive hunk of meat into it, which he immediately tore into with his teeth. "Ancient place. Magic place."

  Hector said nothing. Propping himself on swollen fists, he managed to sit upright. His head swam, nausea surging—the usual effect of their sleeping draughts.

  "Today?" he asked. The chieftain nodded, still gnawing bones, not even glancing his way. "And then? What will you do with me?"

  "You—Chosen," the druid jabbed a finger into Hector’s chest. "You see future. Clan Lynx—want know future. Then Clan Lynx—rule Regerlim."

  Hector sat, staring.

  The smoke shifted, clearing a little. In the heavy air, a few gnats buzzed. The pines loomed sharp, every needle visible. Out of the shadows came the shaman, approaching the fire. The chieftain leaped to his feet at once.

  The shaman rasped something in his own tongue, and Hector saw a satisfied grin spread across Hagbar’s face. The shaman handed him a stalk of some plant with long, dark leaves. Turning to the fire, the chieftain rubbed the stalk between his palms, and Hector caught the strange spicy fragrance, saw the large orange-petaled blossom appear…

  "Fire-weed bloom," the chieftain said softly. "Mountain wake up. Much death—soon. You—Chosen. You see death?" He jabbed a finger at Hector.

  They hauled him up in a violent jerk. His head spun, his legs barely holding him. The druids moved about, dousing the fires; guttural speech rang everywhere, commands barked, weapons gathered. Yet the chieftain, the shaman, and their guard detail did not wait for the others. Kicking and striking him, they drove Hector forward, into the darkness beneath the pines, over mossy boulders scattered along the trail—higher and higher, into the mountains.

  Behind them, the campfires still smoldered. Now their pace was relentless. Hector would gladly have lagged, but he had no choice and stumbled along, gritting his teeth, eyes locked to the ground. The shaman muttered, tapping his staff on stones, drawing runes from his bag.

  Then they shoved him. He tripped on a root and fell flat, face-first into the damp earth. This time, they did not force him up. Around him, the pine trunks rose, tall and resin-scented. Bushes lined the slopes. Overhead, clouds drifted across a swollen yellow moon. Torches flared, light rippling across the bark, illuminating the place they had reached. Hector raised his head, managed to get onto his hands and knees, and looked around.

  Here and there, long stalks rose from the grass, each crowned with bright orange flowers. The shaman carefully picked them, gathering a bouquet in his left hand. The chieftain stood nearby, sword bared. The warrior-druids formed a silent circle around the clearing where the fire-weed bloomed.

  Hector staggered to his feet, swaying. His wild eyes darted among the cannibals. His legs felt hollow, unable to hold him. His mouth was dry, rings of light swam before his eyes. He could not think straight, could not steady himself enough to consider escape, not even now. Horror wracked him, cold ripples surging along his spine.

  "Carantiere homlae!" the chieftain said softly.

  He barely registered the words before they seized him. He had no time even to scream before he was slammed to the ground. Then he cried out, kicking, thrashing, trying to break free, but in seconds they had him bound tighter than before, ropes digging into his flesh. A rag was jammed into his mouth. He could only writhe and moan as they dragged him to a tree and lashed him to the trunk, back against the bark. The shaman stood before him, holding a long silver dagger.

  Now I die, Hector thought, squeezing his eyes shut.

  Shouts.

  Clashing steel.

  He opened his eyes—

  —and saw, at the clearing’s center, on bare stones, a crimson magical fire roaring upward to the pine crowns, filled with golden sparks as fire-weed turned to ash. He saw the chieftain and the shaman leap back, shouting and flailing their arms. He saw torches fly to the ground, weapons snatched up, as from the opposite side of the clearing, down the slope, druids burst from the woods with blades bared and bows drawn, their belts hung with wolf skulls.

  ***

  "Here we are," muttered Petros, coming to a halt.

  Before them, a dark passage beneath a stone arch led deep into the mountainside. The flame of the torch revealed even walls, moss-covered columns, carvings, and hieroglyphs etched into the sandstone. Petros felt his heart pounding wildly. He could hardly restrain his trembling—he wanted to soar into the air. How long had he waited for this moment!

  "Let’s go," he said. "Our reward—it’s here. All we need to do is reach out and take it."

  And he strode forward cautiously, studying every stone under his feet, expecting traps at every step. He had taken the elixir, and his sight had sharpened; he could almost see without the torch, and he saw dancing sparks everywhere—the traces of magic. He felt like a hound on the scent, and only belatedly realized he had crossed half the vestibule alone.

  Petros turned. Vergilius still stood beneath the entrance arch, watching him.

  "Are you coming or not?" Petros barked impatiently.

  "Petros, you are making a grave mistake."

  It took him a moment to grasp the meaning.

  "What?" he asked dumbly. His thoughts still wandered ahead, into the depths of the shrine, where he already pictured himself holding Octarus in his hands.

  "There is no Konrad or Axel here," Vergilius said quietly. "We did not meet them along the way. And I doubt they could have entered the shrine. After all, you had the key this entire time, didn’t you? And the brooch as well."

  "What does it matter? We beat them to it—better for us! We’ll find them later. They’ll come here, I’m sure."

  "Whoever comes here first would be better off not entering," Vergilius said with a sigh.

  "Why’s that?" Petros moved slowly toward the scholar. His thoughts were still muddled, but for a fleeting instant, it seemed he began to understand.

  "This is the last shrine. You know the Star is kept here—I’ve no reason to deceive you. But it is my duty to warn you: taking the Star from where it has been hidden for two thousand years is a tremendous mistake. The Star can belong to no one except the Seer. If you attempt to use it, it will lead to very dire consequences."

  "Really?" Petros laughed. "And what do you know about it? You, a desk rat from the Department of Time Magic?"

  Vergilius sighed.

  "Petros," he said. "You were destined to change this world. You were a key figure in the path to Elysium. If you had not set out on this expedition, then thirty years from now you could have led a revolution in Aktida and become the first leader of the republic. I have no right to tell you this—but now I see no other way, because you’ve gone too far. Octarus will destroy you—and the whole world, because if you take that relic from where it rests, then within just a few decades the world will drown in blood and be annihilated."

  Petros stared, dumbfounded.

  "I tried to stop you," Vergilius said softly. "I believed in your reason, and I hoped that together we might persuade you to turn aside from this path. But somehow, the more we tried, the stronger your resolve grew to reach this brink, the more you were willing to sacrifice for Octarus. Petros, this is not you. What happened to you? What have you become? You have a brilliant future, and the future of Aktida and the entire world depends on you—I beg you, stop now!"

  Petros drew closer. Now, only a few paces separated them.

  "Who the hell are you?" Petros asked hoarsely. "And how do you know the future? What do you really know at all?"

  "Horatius Petros! Halt and do not move! Lay down your weapon! By order of the Fighters’ Guild of Aktida!"

  The shout rang from below the slope, from behind the trees. Torches flickered on all sides. Petros’s face twisted.

  "You brought them here," he said, staring into Vergilius’s eyes.

  "I swear, I didn’t…" Vergilius muttered, genuine astonishment in his eyes.

  The rest of his words stuck in his throat. Petros tore the strap from his shoulder and raised his rifle, aiming the barrel directly at the scholar’s face. Vergilius recoiled and raised his hands.

  "Petros," he whispered. "Please…"

  The shot thundered. Vergilius reeled backward, struck the wall, and slid down. His head sagged limply, his face awash in blood; crimson rivulets trickled sluggishly down the stone. Petros cast one last glance outside, where from the trees below the slope several dozen soldiers were already emerging, some holding torches, others loaded crossbows.

  Then Petros turned and ran headlong into the darkness—into the depths of the Shrine of Vaimos.

  ***

  "This is our chance," Kairu whispered.

  Rita nodded. From their hiding place higher up the slope, they saw that most of the druids had turned from the boy tied to the tree and rushed in the opposite direction, fending off the sudden attack. Only a few cannibals remained by the tree, and even they were clearly bewildered, standing with weapons drawn, staring toward the battle.

  Kairu and Rita crept silently down. They stopped at the very edge of the clearing—one step more and they risked being seen. Rita drew her bow and loosed an arrow. The druid standing closest to Hector collapsed backward with a shaft in his back. The others immediately turned, utterly thrown off by the attack from another side, and in that instant, Kairu burst forward, sword flashing.

  A sidestep. A cannibal lunged at him, swinging his axe wildly, but Kairu was faster. He parried reflexively, without thought, and after steel rang several times, he caught the moment, slashing upward while shoving the cannibal with his foot. The body toppled into the fire. Kairu spun, meeting the next foe, a flicker of an arrow at his side, and saw Rita already reaching for another from her quiver. Kairu had never seen her shoot so swiftly. The cannibals barely had time to raise their weapons before she drew and loosed, her arrows flying with such force they pierced clean through.

  Kairu moved in leaps, cutting sharp and fast, channeling all his strength into the blade’s edge without conserving a shred. Blood sprayed, Alaskrit bit into foes, granting them no respite. Two more druids fell—and the path was clear. He glanced back, saw that Rita held the situation and would cover him, and then dashed to the tree where Hector was bound.

  A few strikes sufficed to sever the ropes that held the youth. Hector slumped from the trunk and fell to the ground. Kairu helped him up and tore out the gag. Rita ran to them. Kairu glanced around, saw the chief of the Lynx Clan and his shaman shouting at the far side of the clearing, saw more druids charging toward them. But most were still locked in the fight, and they had a few moments to slip away in the chaos… Then he realized that besides himself, Rita, and Hector, there was yet another man in the clearing. And this man was running toward them now, staff tapping the ground.

  "Run!" gasped Professor Petros. "Don’t just stand there like statues—they’ll come to their senses any moment and give chase! Run!"