might be a murderous madman, but he’s not stupid. In fact, were he sane, he might have been a valuable asset to us.’
‘Were he sane, there might not be any “us”, Pug.’
‘Not the Conclave, perhaps, but there would have been some group of us or another working together.’
Nakor studied it and said, ‘Where does this go?’ He pointed to the tiny thread of energy, a shimmering silver-green light that was no more than a foot long.
Pug pointed to the end that was closer to himself. ‘This comes from the last place it manifested. There’s a quality about it that is the same.’ He pointed to the east. ‘About a hundred or so miles that way.’
‘Did it look like this?’
‘No,’ said Pug softly. ‘There it was a sphere, about the size of a grape. And it was somehow anchored in place by energy that tethered it to the ground. It was invisible to the eye and without substance, so you could walk through it and never notice. It took a particularly adept spell to reveal it to us. This appears to be …’ He looked back along the line of the energy, as if seeing something. ‘I don’t know how he did this. It looks as if …’ Then his eyes widened. ‘He’s found a way to make this energy jump, Nakor!’
‘What do you mean by jump?’
‘This end here,’ Pug said, pointing, ‘is not a hundred miles from the sphere. It’s connected to it.’ He stood silent a moment, then said, ‘It’s akin to the Tsurani spheres we use to transport ourselves from place to place.’
‘But those are devices,’ said Nakor.
‘Miranda doesn’t need a sphere,’ said Pug softly. ‘She can will herself from place to place if she knows where she’s going.’
‘But no one else can.’
Pug smiled. ‘So I thought, but you forgot to use one when you left the cave on the island the last time we met.’
Nakor shrugged. ‘It’s a trick.’
Pug nodded. ‘She’s been trying to teach Magnus and me the trick, then; we still haven’t got it, but then we’ve only been working on it twenty years or so.’
‘If that end attaches to the sphere,’ said Nakor, ‘where does the other end attach?’
Pug squinted at it, as if he might see where it led. After a few minutes of almost motionless study, his eyes grew round. ‘Nakor,’ he whispered, as if afraid to raise his voice.
‘What?’
‘It’s a rift!’
‘Where?’ said Nakor.
‘At the end of that energy thread. It’s tiny beyond imagining, but it’s there. Varen made his rift work. At first I thought he was storing vast energy to create a rift of normal size, but I was wrong. He just wanted a tiny rift, but one left open … for years.’
Nakor took a deep breath. ‘You know more about rifts than any man living, Pug, so I’ll not doubt you, but how can one exist that’s so tiny?’
‘The level of control to fashion one like this, and to keep it stable, in place, for the year or more we’ve been seeking this … it’s unbelievable.’ Pug stood upright and said, ‘Someone out there knows more about rifts than I do, Nakor. I could never fashion something this delicate, this precise.’
‘We better get back to Bek,’ said Nakor, ‘before he sets fire to the grass just to have something to watch. What do you want to do about this?’
‘I’m going to send a few of our better scholars and ask Magnus to see if we can entice a pair of Tsurani Great Ones to come and examine this thing. We will not have unravelled the mystery of what Leso Varen was doing in Kaspar’s citadel until we find the other end of this energy thread, and that means the other side of the rift.’
Nakor put his hand on Pug’s shoulder and squeezed slightly, as if reassuring him. ‘The other side of the rift could be a very bad place.’
‘It almost certainly is,’ said Pug.
Nakor said, ‘And we still need to talk about those messages you’ve shown me.’
‘I don’t know what more to say, Nakor.’ Pug’s expression grew thoughtful. ‘I may have erred in showing them to you. I haven’t even told Miranda.’
Nakor lost his smile. Pug rarely saw the little man look this thoughtful, so he knew whatever was said next would be something serious. Suddenly the grin was back, and Nakor said, ‘Then you are in very serious trouble when she finds out.’
Pug laughed. ‘I know, but she’s got the worst temper of anyone in the family, and if she read those messages … we both know that time travel is possible. I journeyed to the dawn of time with Macros and Tomas, but I don’t know how to do it.’
‘Apparently, in the future, you do.’
‘But you know what the big question is, don’t you?’
Nakor nodded as they turned away from the tiny glowing thread of magic. ‘Are you sending messages to yourself to ensure a thing happens, or are you sending a message to prevent a thing that has happened to you from coming to be?’
‘I thought about the very first message that appeared to me, the morning before Earl James and the boy Princes left for Kesh.’
‘Tell James if he meets a strange man to say, “There is no magic.”’ Nakor nodded. ‘How do you think you knew that would be me?’
‘My theory is that we met much later in life, perhaps sometime yet in the future, and when things were much more dire than they are now. Perhaps it was my way of ensuring we had years to work together.’
‘I wondered much the same thing,’ said Nakor. ‘But we’ll never know, will we?’
‘If the future is fluid, then whatever I did changed things …’ He laughed. ‘Macros.’
‘What about him?’
‘His hand is in this, I know,’ said Pug. ‘Like everything else in my life …’ He shrugged. ‘If you get the chance, next time you see Tomas, ask him about the armour he wears and his dreams from the past, and … well, let him tell you. But that was Macros, and it also involved time travel.’
‘I will.’
They walked out of the woods, and neither man spoke a word until they reached Bek. The young man grinned. ‘Find it?’
‘Yes,’ said Pug. ‘How did you know it was there?’
Bek shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just felt it was there.’
Pug and Nakor exchanged a look, then Nakor said, ‘Let’s go.’
‘Can we get something to eat?’ asked Bek. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Yes,’ said Pug. ‘We’ll feed you.’ Silently, he added to himself, And we’ll care for you as long as you don’t become a threat. Then we’ll kill you.
Pug took out a Tsurani orb and the three of them vanished from the grassy plain.
KASPAR STRODE INTO THE ROOM.
Talwin Hawkins and Caleb both nodded greeting.
‘It’s done,’ said Kaspar.
‘Political asylum?’ asked Caleb.
‘Of a sort. But