He was several miles from the city when he stopped and looked up at the night sky. “I’m sorry to have to wake you, dear,” he apologized, “but I really need to go home.”

The thunder grumbled off in the distance.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he chided her. “It’s not really all that far, and you can go back to sleep as soon as we get home.”

She grumbled some more, but he could hear her stirring, and there were flickers of light along the eastern horizon.

Then there was a sudden crash, and she was at his side.

“Good girl,” he said, patting her fondly. Then he mounted. “Let’s go home, baby,” he said.

She obediently arched up toward the north, leaving the Trogite Empire behind in the blink of an eye and flashing across the northern sea in a few heartbeats. They flew over the wide strip of ice floes that separated the Trogite Empire from the southern coast of the Land of Dhrall, and Veltan considered that barrier as his thunderbolt carried him over it. The ice belt had been his sister Aracia’s idea, and she’d put it in place while Veltan had been living in exile on the moon. The notion had come to Aracia when she’d realized that the various outlanders had begun to build ships that were much more advanced than the simple rafts that had been prevalent at the beginning of the current cycle. Aracia had reasoned that it might be well to put some sort of barrier in place to keep the outlanders’ ships away from the coast of Dhrall. The barrier had made good sense in the past, but it was likely to cause problems in the current situation. “I think I’ll have to work on that a bit,” he muttered.

His thunderbolt crackled inquiringly.

“Nothing, dear,” he replied. “I was just thinking out loud.”

She muttered something as they reached the coast of Dhrall.

“I didn’t quite catch that, dear,” Veltan said as the thunderbolt put him down on the doorstep of his own house, somewhat farther up the coast.

She repeated what she’d just said, shaking the very ground under his feet.

“That wasn’t nice at all,” he scolded. “Where in the world did you pick up that kind of language?”

She said a few things that were even more colorful, and then she streaked off into the darkness to sulk.

Veltan smiled faintly. It was a little game he and his pet had been playing since the beginning of time. She would shower him with assorted profanities, and he’d pretend to be shocked. They both enjoyed the game, so they played it all the time.

He opened the massive front door of his house and went on inside. Unlike his sister Aracia, Veltan had made his own house, and he suddenly realized that he probably shouldn’t bring Narasan’s Trogites here. The various buildings in Kaldacin had been constructed of squared-off stone blocks, much as Aracia’s temple had been. When Veltan had made his house, he’d made it with a single thought, willing a huge rock into existence in the shape he wanted. It definitely kept the weather out, but it might be just a bit difficult to explain to Narasan’s people. The conversion of thought into reality in a single act of will was obviously something the Trogites wouldn’t be able to comprehend, and that might cause some problems.

All in all, though, it was good to be home again. Traveling about the world was nice enough, but home was much more comfortable. Veltan reached the end of the central corridor and then started up the stairs to the tower where he and Yaltar spent most of their time. “I’m back,” he called up the stairs.

The door to the tower room opened, and Yaltar stood waiting for him. Yaltar was a slender little boy dressed in an ordinary peasant smock. He had dark, dark hair and huge eyes. “Did you have any luck, uncle?” he asked.

“Things turned out rather well,” Veltan replied. “It took me quite a while to find the man I really needed to talk with, but once I found him, we came to an agreement in almost no time at all. Has anything been happening here?”

“Nothing that I’ve heard about. Omago’s wife, Ara, was nice enough to feed me while you were gone.”

“She’s a treasure,” Veltan agreed. Then he noticed something. “What’s that you have around your neck, Yaltar?” he asked.

“Omago tells me that it’s an opal, uncle. I found it just lying on the ground outside our front door a few days after you left.” The boy untied the leather thong that held the opal as a pendant about his neck, and raised the milky stone up for Veltan to see. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said proudly.

“It is indeed, Yaltar,” Veltan agreed, trying his best to sound casual. He could feel the enormous power of the fiery jewel from halfway down the stairs. It was obviously time to step very, very carefully. Veltan knew for a fact that there weren’t any deposits of opals in his Domain, and if Yaltar had found it just outside the front door, it had obviously been put there specifically for the boy to find. The jewel was quite large, somewhat bigger than a plum. It was oval-shaped, with multicolored fire flickering deep within it. Worse yet, Veltan could feel its awareness even as he looked at it. It was a peculiar sort of awareness, but still very familiar.

“Oh, before I forget,” Yaltar said, tying his pendant back around his neck, “Omago asked me to tell you that he’d like to talk with you when you come home.”

“I’ll go see him tomorrow,” Veltan said as he reached the top of the stairs.

They went on into the tower room. Although Veltan’s house was very large, he and his young charge had spent most of their time in this room since Yaltar had been an infant. It was large enough to serve their purposes, and it had the feel of home to them. There was a fire on the hearth, as usual, and the clay pots nearby suggested that Yaltar had been trying his hand at cooking. The room was none too tidy, but Yaltar had been alone for several weeks, and “cleaning up” was an alien concept for the little boy.

“I’ve missed you, uncle,” Yaltar said gravely. “I get lonesome when you aren’t here, and I’ve been having a bad dream. It’s always the same, and it seems to come back every night.” Yaltar was a very serious little boy who seldom smiled.

“Oh? What does it involve?”

“People are killing each other,” Yaltar replied with a shudder. “I don’t really want to watch, but the dream forces me to see everything.”

“Did the surroundings look at all familiar?”

“It’s not anywhere around here, uncle. There are mountains that’re very close to Mother Sea. The sun comes up from behind the mountains, and it goes down somewhere beyond Mother Sea herself.”