THE INADEQUATE ADEPTTHE INADEQUATE ADEPT
 
Copyright © 1993 by Simon Hawke
e-book ver. 1.0
 
For Leanne Christine Harper,
with special thanks to Pat McGiveney, Darla Dunn, Doug and Tomi Lewis of The 
Little Bookshop of Horrors in Arvada, Co., Joe DeRose and the staff of Muddy's 
Cafe in Denver, Co., H. Trask Emery, David Marringly, Brian Thomsen, Mauro 
DiPreta, Fred Cleaver, Chris Zinck, the Mad Scientists Club of Denver and all 
the understanding friends who supported me during this madness. You all know who 
you are, and some of you have asked not to be identified. It's okay, I 
understand.
 
CHAPTER ONE
 
 
Once upon a time...
No. Let's try that again.
Long, long ago, in a universe far, far away...
Nah, that doesn't work, either.
Oh, hell, you think it's easy being the narrator? You try it. Only don't send 
your manuscripts to me, whatever you do. I've got enough problems of my own. 
Such as trying to figure out how to begin this book, for instance.
Let's see now, according to conventional wisdom, you're supposed to begin a 
story with a narrative hook. What's a narrative hook, you ask? It's a slam-bang 
opening sentence that's so compelling, it "hooks" your interest right away and 
makes it damn near impossible not to read on further. Well... I guess I've 
already blown that.
On the other hand, another tried-and-true technique is to get into the action 
right away, just plunge the reader headfirst into the story with the speed of an 
express train and never let up for an instant. Hmmm... too late for that, I 
suppose.
Well, there's always the classic approach used by all those literary authors. 
You know, Dickens and that whole crowd. First, you set the scene with lots of 
colorful, evocative, descriptive writing, then you gradually introduce the main 
characters as you develop the plot, but then that's a rather dated approach and 
modern readers aren't really all that patient with-
"Get on with it," said Warrick.
What?
"I said, get on with it," Warrick Morgannan repeated, looking up toward the 
ceiling as he sat behind his massive desk, bent over his ancient vellum tomes 
and scrolls.
"Get on with what, Master?" asked his troll familiar, Teddy.
"I wasn't speaking to you," said Warrick.
The hairy, little troll glanced around the sorcerer's sanctorum apprehensively, 
noting that the two of them seemed to be alone.
"But, Master..." he whined, plaintively, "there is no one else here!"
"Of course, there is no one else here," snapped Warrick irritably. "I was 
speaking to the voice in the ether."
"The voice in the ether, Master?" said Teddy, picking his nose nervously.
"Yes, you know, the one that calls itself the narrator," Warrick replied.
Teddy swallowed hard and seemed to shrink into himself, which isn't easy to do 
when you're only two feet tall. He'd heard his master speak of this narrator 
before, this mysterious voice in the ether that only he could hear, and it 
always made him feel frightened. Now, the fact is, there's not much that 
frightens trolls, because although they may be rather small, they are extremely 
strong and aggressive. However, Teddy had no idea what to make of this 
invisible, omniscient presence that his master kept referring to. It made him 
very nervous.
"What is it saying, Master?" Teddy asked.
"It's talking about your nerves now," said Warrick with a wry grimace.
"My nerves?" said Teddy, becoming increasingly more nervous.
"Yes, and wasting a great deal of time, I might add," said Warrick, frowning. 
"If there is one thing I cannot stand, 'tis a storyteller who hems and haws and 
cannot seem to get the tale started properly."
Of course, not being a storyteller himself, Warrick was not really in a position 
to appreciate the difficulties involved with beginning the second novel in a 
series, while at the same time trying to take into account the reader who may 
not have read the first one.
"Well, why don't you simply do one of those 'in the last episode' things?" asked 
Warrick impatiently. "Now do get on with it, will you? I have work to do."
Ahem... In our last episode, we met Dr. Marvin Brewster, a brilliant, if 
pathologically vague, American scientist in London, in the employ of EnGulfCo 
International, one of those huge, multinational conglomerates that owns 
companies all over the world and has lots of large buildings with bad art in 
their lobbies. Brewster had what many men might call an enviable life. He was 
making a great deal of money doing what he loved, working out of his own private 
research laboratory with virtually unlimited funding, and he had become engaged 
to a highly intelligent and socially prominent British cybernetics engineer 
named Dr. Pamela Fairburn, who also happened to be drop-dead gorgeous.
Pamela patiently kept trying to get her absent-minded fiance to the altar, only 
Brewster kept failing to show up for his weddings. It wasn't that Brewster was 
gun-shy about marriage, it was simply that he couldn't seem to keep his mind on 
little things like weddings when he was on the verge of perfecting the greatest 
scientific discovery the world had ever seen. Assuming, of course, the world 
would ever get a chance to see it. And therein lies our tale.
For those of you who were thoughtless enough to miss our first installment (The 
Reluctant Sorcerer, Warner Books), never fear, your faithful narrator will bring 
you up to date. The rest of you, hang in there while we wait for the late 
arrivals to catch up. Or simply skip ahead to the next chapter. It's okay, I 
don't mind.
What Brewster had constructed in his top-secret laboratory, high atop the 
corporate headquarters building of EnGulfCo International, was the world's first 
working model of a time machine. We'll skip the details of how he did it, 
because that was covered in our first episode (The Reluctant Sorcerer, Warner 
Books), aside from which, explaining time travel always gives your narrator a 
frightful headache. Suffice it to say that the thing worked, which should have 
assured Brewster's fame and fortune and made him as much of a household name as, 
say, Gene Roddenberry, or maybe even Isaac Asimov, except for one, minor, little 
problem....
Brewster lost it. That's right, the time machine. He lost it. How do you lose 
something the size of a small helicopter? (Yes, that's how big it was, and if 
you'd read our first episode-The Reluctant Sorcerer, Warner Books-you'd have 
known that already.) Well, it had to do with a faulty counter in a timing switch 
that was part of the auto-return module. It's really rather complicated, but if 
you've ever owned a British sports car, then you'll understand how little things 
like that can really screw up the whole works.
As a result of this malfunction, Brewster accidentally sent his time machine off 
on a one-way trip. To get it back, he had to build a second time machine, go 
back in time with it and find the first one... well, you get the idea. It seemed 
simple and straightforward enough. So Brewster built a second time machine and 
that was when his trouble really started.
Due to some kind of freak temporal version of an atmospheric skip (either that, 
or the bizarre machinations of the plot), Brewster wound up in a parallel 
universe that suspiciously resembled the setting of a fantasy novel. And since 
he'd crash-landed his second time machine, Brewster was stuck there, with only 
one chance to make it back. Unless he could find the first time machine he'd 
built, there was no way for him to get back home again. Unfortunately, the first 
time machine was nowhere to be found.
(The reason it was nowhere to be found: three brigands had found it in the 
Redwood Forest and sold it to a nearby sorcerer, who managed to stumble onto a 
spell that tapped into its energy field.) However, the time machine was not 
designed to be operated by magical remote control, and as a result, it hadn't 
functioned quite the way it was supposed to.
There was a temporal phase loop, or maybe a short circuit, and the sorcerer 
disappeared, while the time machine remained exactly where it was. When the 
sorcerer did not return, his frightened apprentice took this mysterious and 
terrible device to Warrick Morgannan, the most powerful wizard in all the 
twenty-seven kingdoms, and the bane of your faithful narrator's existence.
"What?" said Warrick, glancing up from his vellum tomes and scrolls.
Nothing. Go back to work.
Warrick scowled and went back to his paperwork again while Teddy the Troll 
continued to sweep the floor, nervously glancing up toward the ceiling.
Now where were we? Right, we were discussing Brewster's strange predicament. The 
first person Brewster ran into in this primitive and magical new world was Mick 
O'Fallon, whom he first took to be a midget, but who actually happened to be a 
leprechaun. Mick witnessed Brewster's dramatic arrival in his world and 
naturally assumed that Brewster was a mighty sorcerer. He also mistakenly 
assumed that "Brewster" was a title, not a name, as in "one who brews." In other 
words, an alchemist. And since Brewster habitually told everyone he met to call 
him "Doc," Mick called him "Brewster Doc," and the name, as well as the mistaken 
assumption it engendered, stuck.
An amateur alchemist himself, Mick was seeking the secret of the Philosopher's 
Stone, which in this particular universe had nothing to do with turning base 
metals into gold, but into a much rarer metal known as nickallirium, the chief 
medium of exchange in the twenty-seven kingdoms. The secret of making 
nickallirium was controlled by the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, which meant they 
also controlled the economy in all the twenty-seven kingdoms. They guarded this 
power jealously, and allowed no one to practice magic unless they were a 
dues-paying member of the Guild. Brewster was ignorant of all these details, 
however, and in the universe in which he found himself, ignorance was anything 
but bliss.
When word began to spread that a new wizard had arrived, the residents of the 
nearby town of Brigand's Roost began to drop by to make the new sorcerer's 
acquaintance. As the town's name might lead one to believe, the residents of 
Brigand's Roost were mostly outlaws who plied their trade along the trails and 
thorny hedgerows of the Redwood Forest. They were known as the Black Brigands, 
for the black masks they wore in imitation of their leader, the infamous Black 
Shannon, a deceptively angelic-looking woman with the disposition of a she-wolf 
and the morals of an alley cat. Now while such character traits might be 
regarded as shortcomings in most social situations, they happen to be extremely 
useful in conducting business, and Shannon quickly saw certain advantages to 
having a wizard in the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Warrick was busy trying to solve the mystery of Brewster's missing 
time machine.
"Yes, what is it now?" snapped Warrick.
Teddy gave a guilty start and dropped his broom.
"I am very busy, Teddy," Warrick said. "Whatever it is, it can wait."
"But, Master-"
"I said, it can wait!"
Teddy stuck his lower lip out petulantly, picked up his broom and resumed 
sweeping, mumbling under his breath.
Now, due to unforeseen circumstances, your narrator has to be extremely careful 
when it conies to writing about... you-know-who, because as we have already 
discovered back in our first episode, the Grand Director of the Guild is a very 
powerful adept, indeed. So powerful, in fact, that he can detect the presence of 
the narrator. This could make things rather sticky.
The thing is, as any good writer can tell you, characters who are properly 
developed tend to take on lives of their own and... you-know-who is certainly no 
exception. His characterization demanded highly developed thaumaturgical 
abilities and magical sensitivities of a very high order. The trouble is, when 
you start playing around with things like magic, there's no telling what might 
happen, and in this case, what apparently happened was that your faithful 
narrator did his job a shade too well.
As a result of overhearing some narrative exposition in the previous episode, 
War...uh, Teddy's master has already discovered that the mysterious 'apparatus 
now in his possession is something called a "time machine," though he has yet to 
figure out exactly what that means. He has deduced that it is a device for 
transporting people somewhere, but he has no idea where or how. To solve this 
mystery, he has offered a reward for the capture of the brigands who had found 
the strange machine, in the hope that they can lead him to its creator.
Brewster was unaware of all these ominous machinations, and when last we left 
our unsuspecting hero, he had made an agreement with a dragon by the name of 
Rory, who promised to help Brewster find his missing time machine. In return, 
Brewster would tell the dragon stories of the world he came from. Unfortunately, 
Brewster neglected to take into account the fact that dragons live forever, and 
they love hearing stories almost as much as they love to frolic in the autumn 
mist, so this could develop into a rather open-ended deal.
Having set up housekeeping in a crumbling, old keep, Brewster must now 
reluctantly live up to his reputation as a sorcerer, which is a bit of a trick, 
since he can't do any magic. However, as Arthur C. Clarke once said, any 
knowledge that is sufficiently advanced would seem like magic to those who 
didn't understand it, and while Brewster knew nothing about magic, he did know a 
thing or two about science.
In exchange for help in seeking the whereabouts of his missing "magic chariot," 
Brewster has set about the task of bringing progress-and, hopefully, some 
profit-to the muddy, little town of Brigand's Roost. He is aided in this task by 
Mick, the leprechaun; Bloody Bob, the huge, nearsighted brigand; a local farmer 
named McMurphy, who has visions of becoming a tycoon; and Brian, the enchanted 
werepot prince, who many years ago had been turned into a golden chamberpot by 
an irate sorcerer whose daughter Brian had seduced. During each full moon, 
Prince Brian reverts to his human form, which has remained agelessly youthful, 
while the child he had fathered has grown up to become none other than the Grand 
Director of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, Warrick Morgannan.
"Now what?" snapped Warrick, looking up from his ancient vellum tomes and 
scrolls once more.
"But, Master, I said nothing!" Teddy the Troll protested.
"I distinctly heard my name mentioned," Warrick said severely.
Teddy swallowed hard and glanced around anxiously. " 'Twasn't me, Master. It 
must have been the narrator." However, he looked very guilty and his denial was 
not entirely convincing.
Warrick narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Are you certain 'twas not you?"
"Nay, Master, I said nothing! Nothing!"
"I do not care for pranks, Teddy."
"But I could never play a prank on you, Master," Teddy insisted vehemently. "I 
would not know how! Trolls have no sense of humor."
"Aye, 'tis true," said Warrick, scowling. "It must be that the narrator has 
begun the tale."
"It has a tail?" said Teddy with alarm.
Warrick rolled his eyes. "Oh, never mind. Fetch me that stack of scrolls over 
there."
Teddy put down his broom and went over to the stack of ancient scrolls Warrick 
had indicated. "All of them, Master?"
"Aye, all of them. Somewhere, there has to be an incantation that will allow me 
to summon up this narrator and compel him to do my bidding. I shall not rest 
until I find it."
Fortunately, Warrick would never find such a spell, because your faithful 
narrator has no intention of writing it into the plot. So there.
Warrick slammed his fist down on the table, then angrily swept all the scrolls 
onto the floor, making Teddy jump back in fear.
"There shall be a reckoning," he said, through gritted teeth. "You mark me 
well."
"But, Master, you said to fetch the scrolls!"
"Blast it, Teddy, I wasn't speaking to you!"
"Oh," said Teddy. "Forgive me, Master, I thought-"
"Don't think!"
"Yes, Master. I mean, no, Master, I shan't."
Warrick shut his eyes in patient suffering. "Of all the familiars I could have 
chosen, I had to pick a stupid troll. I could have had a nice black cat, or an 
intelligent owl, perhaps, but nooooo...."
Teddy looked stricken. He sniffled, men waddled back to his grubby little corner 
in the sorcerer's sanctorum, where he sat all hunched up, hugging his hairy 
little knees to his chest and pouting.
"I hate the narrator," he mumbled to himself. "I hate him, I hate him, I hate 
him!"
A large glass beaker filled with noxious fluid suddenly fell off the shelf above 
where Teddy sat and shattered on his head, covering him with foul-smelling ooze.
"Teddy!" Warrick shouted.
With a whimper, the little troll bolted out the door.
 
CHAPTER TWO
 
The stone keep looked decidedly odd with the solar collectors mounted in place. 
Angling up from the roof of the lower section of the keep, the collectors ran up 
to the tower, just below the fourth floor. Mick had been puzzled by the project 
from the very start, and thought that the collectors looked "bloody peculiar," 
but Bloody Bob, the immense old brigand who was Brewster's self-appointed "loyal 
retainer," thought that they looked pretty. But then again, he had been the 
foreman in charge of their construction, and had developed quite a proprietary 
attitude about them.
Ever since Brewster had appointed him construction foreman on the projects at 
the keep, Bloody Bob had undertaken his new duties with an earnest zeal. He 
insisted that everyone address him as "Foreman," and any brigand who forgot and 
called him Bob was fetched a mighty clout upon the head that usually rendered 
him unconscious. And when Foreman Bob stood back for the first time to take a 
good look at the fruit of all his labors, his massive chest had swelled with 
pride.
The construction of the solar collectors had entailed building wooden frames on 
which were mounted loops of copper pipes, made by bending copper sheets around 
rods of pig iron and then forming them and soldering them together. They were 
then painted black with pitch and connected to the water tank on the fourth 
floor with a loop running through Brewster's brand-new Franklin stove, which 
Mick insisted on calling an "O'Fallon stove," since he had made it in his smithy 
to Brewster's specifications and had already taken orders for half a dozen more 
from the residents of Brigand's Roost. The water tank was kept filled by the 
cistern on the roof, and the collectors stored the solar heat that would enable 
Brewster, for the first time since his arrival in this primitive, medieval 
world, to take hot showers.
This, in itself, was a source of puzzlement to many of the brigands. As a rule, 
they didn't like to bathe at all, and considered it an unhealthy practice. Since 
the infrequent baths they took at the insistence of Black Shannon, who was 
averse to body odor, were normally taken in the ice-cold waters of the rushing 
stream, it wasn't difficult to see where they had come up with this notion. As 
for the shower Brewster had designed, they had no idea what to make of that, at 
all. Nor could they comprehend Brewster Doc's other new alchemical mystery.. .a 
strange concoction he called "soap."
They had all crowded around to watch as Brewster directed Bloody Bob and Robie 
McMurphy in rendering the fat from butchered spams, which were squat and ugly, 
hoglike creatures with rodent faces and hairless, pink-speckled bodies. Their 
fat content was high, McMurphy had explained, and the meat tasted so vile that 
even starving hunters passed them up. However, since animal fat had been 
required for Brewster's "alchemical recipie," the brigands had slain half a 
dozen spams they found rooting in the forest.
Standing over a boiling cauldron that Mick had brought out from his smithy, 
McMurphy and Bloody Bob worked under Brewster's direction, skimming the top 
until the "sorcerous brew" was clear. Then Brewster had them pour it through 
some hand-woven cloth which they had filled with ashes, to add lye to the 
mixture, into a mold where it was left to solidify. Mick had wrinkled his nose 
as he gazed at the soap solidifying in the molds.
"And you say the purpose of this magically rendered fat is to cleanse the body?" 
he'd asked dubiously.
"Well... yes," Brewster had replied.
"And how does it do that?" asked Mick. He wrinkled his nose again. "You're not 
going to eat it, surely?"
Brewster laughed. "No, no, of course not, Mick. You stand under the shower and 
scrub yourself with it."
"Aye? And then what happens?" asked McMurphy.
"Well, then you rinse off," said Brewster. "And the dirt washes away, leaving 
you fresh and clean."
McMurphy shook his head in amazement. "Think of it!" he said. "A magical dirt 
remover!"
"And it only works when the water is hot?" asked Mick.
"No, it works whether the water is hot or cold," said Brewster. "Only it's a lot 
nicer when it's hot."
" Tis something I will have to see," said Mick.
"You can try it for yourself," said Brewster. "In fact, I encourage all of you 
to try it. There's plenty of soap to go around."
Of course, once he had said that, they all wanted to see him try it, first. And 
no amount of recalcitrance on Brewster's part would dissuade them from 
witnessing his first hot shower. Brewster felt a bit self-conscious about the 
prospect of taking a shower in front of a crowd, but since it was in the 
interests of science and general cleanliness, he decided he could put up with a 
small amount of embarrassment. The only condition he'd insisted upon was that 
none of the women could watch.
Once the solar collectors had been installed and the water in the tank 
adequately heated, a small crowd gathered in front of his spacious shower stall, 
which Bloody Bob had constructed out of stone, mortar, and copper, with Mick 
handling the plumbing, which he was rapidly becoming quite expert at. Even the 
peregrine bush was present, having learned to climb the stairs to Brewster's 
quarters in the tower, where Bloody Bob had placed a large wooden planter filled 
with earth, so the bush could burrow its roots in while Brewster slept.
The little red-gold thorn bush had taken to following Brewster around 
everywhere, so Mick had given it to Brewster, for the curious little ambulatory 
shrub had attached itself to him like an affection-starved puppy. It had always 
been afraid of Mick, who had caught it while it was wandering around the forest 
near his smithy, and the fact that Mick always yelled at it and constantly kept 
threatening to throw it in a pot for his next batch of peregrine wine had made 
it very nervous. Its branches shook violently whenever Mick came near, and when 
he yelled at it, its leaves drooped disconsolately. However, Brewster had always 
spoken nicely to it, remembering that Pamela had always spoken to her 
houseplants, and the peregrine bush had responded to his kindness. Its leaves 
had taken on a brighter sheen and its branches were sending forth new growth 
shoots.
"Sure, and you can keep the bloody thing," said Mick, "for 'twas forever getting 
underfoot and being a damned nuisance. Mind you, though, 'tis but a wee shrub 
now, and you'll have yourself a thorny problem when it grows to its full height. 
When you tire of it, let me know, and I'll brew it up for wine."
"Oh, I couldn't possibly do that, Mick," protested Brewster. "It.. .trusts me."
"Well, don't be saying that I didn't warn you, then," Mick had replied.
"Oh, I'm sure that Thorny and I will get along just fine," said Brewster.
Mick had raised his eyebrows. "Thorny?"
"Well... that's the name I've given it," admitted Brewster sheepishly.
Mick shook his head and sighed. "First you go speaking to the shrubbery, and now 
you've taken to naming it, as well. Faith, Doc, and you're a different sort o' 
man entirely."
So with even his pet bush in attendance to watch the inauguration of the soap, 
Brewster stripped down awkwardly as the others watched curiously. He turned 
away, blushing, as he took off his boxer shorts with the little red lips on 
them. The shorts had been a gift from Pamela, who had thought that they were 
"cute," but none of the brigands snickered when they saw them. They knew that 
adepts often went in for all sorts of cabalistic symbols on their clothing, each 
of which had a sorcerous purpose, and when they saw the shorts, they merely 
looked at one another significantly. Though Brewster wouldn't be aware of it, 
the women of Brigand's Roost would soon be busy sewing boxer shorts with little 
red lips on them, the better to improve their menfolk's potency.
Brewster stepped into the shower. He turned on the tap, and as the warm water 
flowed through the perforated copper showerhead Mick had constructed, he began 
to soap himself. The brigands gasped and drew back when they saw the soap begin 
to lather up.
" Tis the foam of madness!" Pikestaff Pat cried out.
"No, no," protested Brewster, looking back over his shoulder at them. "It's 
supposed to do this. The lather... the foam is what gets you clean, you see."
With a rustling sound, the little peregrine bush reacted to the sound of water 
dripping. It shuffled forward quickly on its roots and jumped into the shower 
with Brewster, so it could get under the spray.
"Thorny! No!" shouted Brewster, crying out as the bush's thorny branches 
scratched him. He hopped about in the shower stall as the confused bush scuttled 
about beneath the spray with him, its sharp little thorns pricking his skin.
Unable to help themselves, the brigands burst out laughing uncontrollably as the 
dejected little bush hopped out of the shower stall and went to huddle, quaking, 
in a corner, water dripping from its drooping leaves. Facing them, naked, wet, 
and foamy, Brewster saw Black Shannon standing in their forefront, her hands on 
her hips and a mocking little smile on her face.
She had come in while his back was turned, intent on not missing the 
demonstration, and now her gaze traveled appreciatively up and down his body. As 
the laughter died down, Brewster blushed furiously and covered himself up with 
his hands.
Shannon merely smiled and held out a cloth towel for him to dry himself off 
with.
Brewster stepped out of the shower, hunched over, took the towel from her, and 
hastily wrapped it around his middle. "Th-thank you," he stammered. "Well... 
anyway ..." he added, clearing his throat awkwardly, "that's how it works."
"We shall all try this magic soap," Shannon said, with a glance around at the 
others, who looked rather uncertain about this new development.
Pikestaff Pat shook his head. "If you ask me, 'tis not seemly for a man to be 
all lathered up, like some bloody horse run half to death."
"I didn't ask you," Shannon snapped. Her blade scraped free of its scabbard and 
she put its point to Pikestaff Pat's throat. "I said that we shall all try it. 
Any questions!"
"Uh ... no," replied Pikestaff Pat, with a nervous swallow, his gaze focused on 
the sword 'point at his throat.
"From now on, each and every brigand will possess a piece of this magic soap," 
said Shannon. "And each of you will use it, understood?"
There was a chorus of grumbled, "Ayes." With a satisfied nod at Brewster, 
Shannon sheathed her sword, turned on her heel, and strode out of the room.
"Well," mumbled Pikestaff Pat, as the remainder of them filed out, "at least we 
found a use for the bloody spams."
Sean MacGregor had spent the better part of the evening sharpening his blades by 
the campfire. It took a while because he was meticulous about their being 
sharpened properly and because he had better than a dozen of them, of various 
shapes and sizes, worn on his belt and in crossed bandoliers over his chest. He 
also had his sword, which was a true work of art indeed, as was only fitting for 
MacGregor the Bladesman, who had yet to meet his match.
Attached to the breast of his brown, rough-out leather tunic was the coveted 
badge of the Footpads and Assassins Guild, in the shape of a double-edged 
dagger. MacGregor's badge was different from all the others, in that it also had 
a star inscribed upon its blade, which identified him without question as the 
number-one assassin in the Guild, entitled to command top rates. He had been the 
number-one assassin ever since he had assassinated the previous number-one 
assassin, which was generally how rank was determined in the Guild. Since inept 
assassins did not usually last very long as a result, this practice ensured a 
consistent, high level of professionalism.
Seated across from him, on the other side of the camp-fire, were his three 
apprentice henchmen, the brawny brothers Hugh, Dugh, and Lugh. They were as 
alike as peas in a pod, and hardly anyone but Mac could tell them apart. They 
were strapping, young bruisers with straw-colored mops of hair and amiable, 
round, peasant faces that generally wore expressions of bovine placidity, except 
for when they had to fight or think. When they were forced to think, their faces 
contorted into such pained expressions that one might have thought they were 
suffering from terminal constipation. But when faced with a fight, their 
ploughboy faces lit up with an innocent, childlike joy.
Mac had first met them in a Pittsburgh watering hole known as The Stealers 
Tavern, famed hangout of assassins, cutpurses, and alleymen. The three brothers 
had just finished taking on all comers and the tavern was a shambles, with limp 
bodies slung about all over the place. Recognizing potential when he saw it, Mac 
had offered them positions as his apprentices and they had eagerly jumped at the 
opportunity of learning a good trade, and from no less an accomplished 
instructor than the famous Mac the Knife.
They had been on the road for several weeks now, on the trail of three men 
sought by Warrick the White, who was paying not only Mac's top rate, but 
offering an attractive bonus, as well. This was the first actual assignment in 
the field the three brothers had ever participated in, and they were eager to 
learn as much as they could. The only problem was, there was only so much their 
dense craniums could handle at any given time, and instructing them in the finer 
points of stalking and assassination was a taxing process. It was fortunate that 
MacGregor was a patient man.
He grimaced as he glanced across the campfire at his three apprentices, who were 
busily stuffing themselves with roasted spam. They had killed two of the 
creatures earlier that afternoon, and despite Mac telling them that spams didn't 
make good eating, the brothers had cooked them up anyway and now they sat mere, 
chewing and belching happily, brown fat juices dribbling down their chins onto 
their tunics.
''You actually like spam?" MacGregor asked with disbelief.
"Aye, 'tis powerful good, Mac!" Dugh replied. " 'Ere, tear yourself off a 
chunk!"
He held out a dripping, suety mass of roasted, pink-speckled flesh. Mac winced 
and recoiled from it. The smell alone was enough to stunt your growth, he 
thought.
"No, thank you, I am not very hungry," he replied with a sour grimace of 
distaste.
"Suit yourself, then," Dugh replied, elbowing his brothers gleefully. "Just 
means more for us, eh, lads?"
Mac reached for the wineskin and squirted a stream into his mouth. He sighed, 
leaned back against a tree trunk, and lit up his pipe. "Right, then," he said, 
when he had it going. "Time to review our progress, lads."
They all sat up attentively, like acromegalic schoolboys.
"What have we learned thus far?"
"About what, Mac?" asked Lugh with a puzzled frown.
MacGregor rolled his eyes and drew a long, patient breath. "About our quarry, 
lads, the three men we are seeking for our esteemed patron, Warrick the White."
"Well... there's three of them," offered Dugh.
MacGregor shut his eyes in patient suffering. "Yes, very good, Dugh, there are 
three of them. But if you will recall, we knew that to begin with, did we not? 
What else?"
The brothers screwed their faces up in expressions of fierce concentration. "One 
of 'em likes wee wooden horses!" Hugh finally said triumphantly.
MacGregor reached into his pouch and removed a small, hand-carved, wooden 
chesspiece. "Right," he said, holding it up. "And what, exactly, does this wee 
wooden horse signify?"
"Uh... a knight?" asked Lugh.
"Very good, Lugh! It signifies a knight. And what is the name of the game in 
which this knight is a game piece?"
"Cheese!" said Dugh.
"Close," said MacGregor with a wry grimace. "Actually, 'tis called chess. Try to 
remember that. Now, let's all say it together, shall we?"
"Chess," said the brothers in unison.
"Very good," said Mac. "And what is the significance of this information?"
Silence.
"It tells us that at least two of the men we seek are players," said MacGregor, 
"and it also tells us that they are probably somewhat clever, as chess is a game 
for clever men. Further, the fact that they had brought this game with them on 
their journey indicates that they are avid players, and chances are that they 
had probably played this game whenever they had stopped to rest. So...." He gave 
them a prompting glance, hoping for the best.
Silence.
"Hugh?" said MacGregor. "Come on, now, lad, you can do it...."
Hugh concentrated with such intensity that he let loose a tremendous fart.
"Oh, blind me, what a bloody stench!" cried Dugh, scuttling away from his 
brother. Lugh grabbed his own throat dramatically and made gurgling, choking 
noises.
"You shut up now!" shouted Hugh.
"Argh!" said Lugh. " Tis like a bloated corpse, all burst apart and squirmy with 
bleedin' little worms and maggots..."
"You shut up!" cried Hugh, fetching his brother a clout on the head. "I'll 
bloody well kill you, I will!"
"Argh! Kill me, too!" cried Dugh, performing a mock swoon. "A quick death would 
be merciful!"
Hugh leaped upon his other brother and in seconds, the three of them were 
scrabbling around in the dirt, pummeling each other and laughing hysterically.
MacGregor looked up toward the heavens and addressed a quiet plea to the gods. 
"For pity's sake," he said, "don't just look down. Help me."
Whereupon the sky was suddenly split with lightning, followed by the crash of 
thunder, and it began to rain, a deluge that quickly put out the campfire and 
had the hot coals steaming.
MacGregor glanced up at the sky again and murmured, "That wasn't quite what I 
had in mind." He frowned and pulled his cloak over him for shelter. Meanwhile, 
the narrator, feeling playfully omniscient, smiled smugly and went on to the 
next scene.
Bonnie King Billy sat leaning back against the headboard of his royal bed, 
wearing his royal nightgown and his royal nightcap and feeling royally 
depressed. He frequently felt depressed when it was raining, but on this night, 
he felt especially depressed, and not just because of the rotten weather.
Next to him, the beautiful Queen Sandy reclined gracefully with her head on her 
down pillow, her long and slim legs bent at an attractive angle underneath the 
covers, the slinky outline of her body underneath the sheets making a fine, 
aesthetic counterpoint to the way her long, golden hair was spread out across 
the pillow, like an angel's halo. (None of this has anything to do with the 
following scene, of course, your narrator simply likes to entertain himself 
every now and then.)
"Petitions," mumbled King Billy disconsolately.
"Mmmmm?" murmured Queen Sandy.
"Nothing but petitions," said King Billy, sticking out his lower lip in a royal 
pout. "Petitions, petitions, and more petitions. Each one worded more nastily 
than the one before it, too."
Queen Sandy sighed. "Are you still on about that?" she murmured. "Go to sleep, 
William. 'Tis late."
"How can I sleep with all these petitions hanging over my head?" asked King 
Billy grumpily. "I always thought my subjects loved me. You always told me that 
they did."
"They did, and they do," replied Queen Sandy, burrowing down into her pillow. 
"Now go to sleep."
"Well, if they love me, then why do they assail me with this avalanche of 
petitions?"
Queen Sandy sighed wearily. " 'Tis because of the new edicts," she replied.
King Billy frowned. "What new edicts? I have issued no new edicts."
"You did," she insisted. "The royal sheriff issued them in your name. And he 
continues to issue new ones all the time, as quickly as he can think up new laws 
for the people to break."
"Really?" said King Billy. "Well, what's he doing that for?"
Queen Sandy sighed again and sat up in bed, turning toward her husband. "He's 
doing it because Warrick told him to," she said. "And you gave Warrick your 
blanket approval, don't you remember?"
"I did?" King Billy asked. "Why did I do that?"
"To restock the royal dungeons," explained Queen Sandy, "so that Warrick could 
use the prisoners for his magical experiments, instead of simply having his 
minions snatching people off the streets."
"Ah, quite so, quite so," King Billy replied, nodding. "I remember now. I was 
receiving petitions complaining of my subjects being snatched off the street and 
I told Warrick he could use the prisoners, instead." He frowned. "I thought that 
solved the problem."
"It would have," replied Queen Sandy, "except that Warrick had already depleted 
the royal dungeons, and in order for there to be more prisoners, there had to be 
more arrests, and in order for there to be more arrests, there had to be more 
laws for the people to break, and in order for there to be more laws, there had 
to be new edicts. And Warrick suggested that you give the royal sheriff your 
approval to issue some new edicts, announcing some new laws. Do you remember 
now?"
"Aye, of course," King Billy said. "So that should have taken care of matters. 
But then why all these new petitions?"
Queen Sandy gave him one of her special looks.
"I just hate it when you give me one of your special looks," complained King 
Billy. "It always makes me feel as if I've done something particularly foolish."
" Tis because you always do something particularly foolish to provoke such 
looks," Queen Sandy replied.
"Well... what have I done this time?"
"You have solved a problem with another problem," said Queen Sandy. "Warrick's 
minions were snatching people off the streets, and so the people sent in 
petitions of complaint. You chose to allow Warrick to use the prisoners in the 
royal dungeons, so that he wouldn't need to snatch people off the streets, only 
he had already used up all the prisoners without asking your permission, so 
instead of giving him a royal reprimand, you agreed to his suggestion that the 
royal sheriff issue some new edicts, which would bring about increased arrests, 
so that now, instead of Warrick's minions snatching people off the streets, your 
minions are snatching people off the streets and giving them to Warrick. 
Nothing's changed, my dear, except that instead of the people blaming Warrick, 
now they are blaming you. And that is why you are receiving more petitions."
"Oh," said King Billy. "I see." He put his fingers up to his lips in a gesture 
reminiscent of David Niven (at least, it would have been reminiscent of David 
Niven if anyone in this universe had known who David Niven was). "Well, I 
suppose I shall have to do something about that."
"That would be nice, dear," said the queen, lying back underneath the covers 
once again.
King Billy brightened. "I know! I shall issue a new edict outlawing petitions!"
"Oh, go to sleep!" Queen Sandy said.
At approximately the same time, in another part of town, a rather seedy part of 
town, specifically, the corner of Cutthroat Avenue and Garotte Place, it was 
nearing closing time in The Stealers Tavern and the tavern keeper announced last 
call.
"Last call!" announced the tavern keeper redundantly.
"I'll have another," said the small, dark, feisty-looking, hawk-faced man 
sitting at the end of the bar. He tapped his mug for emphasis.
The tavern keeper grimaced and brought the man another mineral water and lime. 
"You sure you don't want a real drink, now?" he asked the hawk-faced man for the 
fourth time."
"For the fourth time, I don't drink," the hawk-faced man replied.
"You know something? They say you can never trust a man who doesn't drink," the 
tavern keeper grumbled.
"You know something? They're right," the hawk-faced man replied. "Now shut up 
and leave me alone."
Harlan the Peddlar drank his mineral water and scowled at the retreating back of 
the tavern keeper. He was not in a particularly cheerful mood. Business was 
slow. In fact, business was downright awful. At the rate things were going, he 
thought, he'd soon be reduced to eating the spam stew handed out at the local 
soup kitchens. It was all part of Bonnie King Billy's FTP Program, which stood 
for Feed The Poor, although most of the poor people in the kingdom called it 
Something-Else The Poor.
"I never should have picked this business," Harlan the Peddlar mumbled to 
himself through gritted teeth. "I should've been a bard, instead. Bloody bards 
have all the luck. Wandering about, strumming on their blasted zithers, telling 
fantastical lore.... S'trewth, 'tain't workin'. That's the way to do it. Making 
money telling fantasy. Aye, 'tain't workin'. That's the way to do it. Money for 
nothing and your maids for free."
Knopfler the Bard walked up behind the peddlar and tapped him on the shoulder. 
"Watch it," he said.
"Sod off!" said the peddlar. He finished off his drink, took a deep breath, and 
exhaled heavily. "What I need is something new," he said to himself. "Something 
people will want, and that no one else has to offer. Something unique, so I'll 
be able to control the price. Only where is one to find such a commodity? What 
could it be?"
He paid for his drinks and left the tavern, going back out to his peddlar's 
cart. He paid the ruffian he'd hired to watch it while he was inside, scowling 
as he counted out the coins, yet knowing full well that if he hadn't bought such 
protection, not only would all his wares have disappeared, but probably his cart 
and horse, as well.
"Whatever it may be," he mumbled to himself as he climbed up into his cart, "I 
shan't find it in Pittsburgh. Too many craftsmen here, too many peddlars 
stopping by to call on them. I'll need to find some craftsman somewhere who 
hasn't been discovered yet. Aye, that's what I'll need to do. Scour the 
countryside and find some unknown, starving craftsman somewhere who's got 
something completely different. What could it be, though, what could it be?"
The determined peddlar whipped up his horse, and the cart slowly lumbered off, 
heading toward the road leading out of the city. He'd bought provisions enough 
for a long journey. Somewhere out there, in the wilds, he knew he'd find what he 
was seeking. He had no idea what it was yet, but when he found it, he'd know.
 
CHAPTER THREE
 
"Doc, wake up!"
"Mmmmm?" Brewster opened his eyes and started when he saw Shannon standing by 
his bed, looking down at him. She stood in her habitual, aggressive posture, 
legs spread apart, hands on her hips, close to the pommels of her sword and 
dagger. All things considered, it was quite a sight to wake up to first thing in 
the morning.
"Doc, we need to talk," said Shannon, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
Belatedly, Brewster realized that it had been a warm night and he had kicked 
most of the covers off himself. He realized this when Shannon cast a lingering, 
appreciative gaze down along his body, stopping at... well, you know where she 
stopped. She smiled as he made a quick grab for the covers and pulled them up 
over himself.
"You seem pleased to see me," said Shannon with a smile.
"That... uh ... often happens with men... in the morning," Brewster explained, 
blushing furiously.
"Indeed?" said Shannon, raising her eyebrows. "I hadn't known. I'd never 
lingered long enough to find out."
"Yes, well...." Brewster cleared his throat awkwardly. "What was it you wanted 
to discuss?"
"We can speak while you get dressed," said Shannon.
"Uh, no...that's okay," said Brewster hastily. "That can wait. Go ahead, I'm 
listening."
" Tis about my men," said Shannon.
"What about them?"
"You have the greater part of them laboring here upon your sorcerous works," she 
said. "Now, 'tis not that I'm complaining, mind you, I quite understand that 
there is much to do, what with Mick and Robie requiring help in making the 
many-bladed knives, and tending to the brewing and the manufacture of the magic 
soap, and then there are the stoves to make, and the wire to be pulled and the 
copper pipes to be formed... well, 'tis all most wondrous, you see, but Bob has 
almost all the men assisting in these various works, which leaves me but a few 
to dispose about the forest trails to ply our brigand trade. We are taking in 
less booty now than ever before, and I fear that at this rate, we shall soon be 
in rather dire straits."
Brewster nodded. "I see," he said. "You're worried about your income."
"Income?" Shannon asked with a puzzled frown.
"Uh, yes, the booty, as you put it," Brewster explained. "The profits that come 
in. In-come, you see?"
"Ah," said Shannon, comprehending. "In-come." She nodded. "A useful expression. 
I shall have to remember it." She crossed her long and lovely legs and Brewster 
shifted uncomfortably beneath his covers. He wished she'd wear more clothing. 
"So... you see my difficulty," she continued. "You said there would be profit to 
be made from this manufacturing process of yours. My concern is that you have 
most of my men working here day in and day out, yet thus far, we have seen none 
of this profit, this in-come, as you call it."
"I understand," said Brewster. "However, you must understand that this sort of 
thing takes time."
"How much time?" Shannon asked.
"Well.. .first, we have to establish the process and work out all the problems," 
Brewster explained. "Then we have to build up our inventory.. .our stock. as it 
were. And then, we have to institute our marketing program. Now, I've been 
giving that a lot of thought, because it's not really my area of expertise, you 
see, and I'm not quite certain how to go about it yet, but once we have-"
"All this means nothing to me," Shannon interrupted impatiently. "And it sounds 
as if 'twill take a great deal more time. I fail to see the wisdom in this. As 
brigands, we reap our profits much more quickly."
"Yes, I suppose that's true," said Brewster. "However, it's a much more 
uncertain business. I mean, you can't depend on it for steady work, if you can 
see my point. Aside from that, the risks are greater. And it's dishonest."
"What has that to do with anything?" asked Shannon.
"Well... wouldn't you rather have a steady income, with a far greater potential 
for profit and much less risk?" he asked.
"Aye, I would," said Shannon, "only when does all this come about? How long 
shall I have to wait?"
Brewster sighed. "Shannon, we're barely getting started," he replied. "Please, 
try to be a little patient. These things take time. However, I promise you, if 
you can only be patient a little while longer, it will be well worth it. You'll 
see."
Shannon pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Very well," she said. "I shall wait a 
while longer and try to be more patient, as you ask. But we had best see some 
profit soon."
She turned and strode out of Brewster's room, leaving him sitting up in bed, 
clutching the covers to himself and feeling very anxious. She was the most 
unpredictable young woman he had ever met, and the most difficult to figure out. 
Not that he'd ever been much good at understanding women in the first place.
He looked around the room as he sat in the crudely made wooden bed, clutching 
the coarsely woven blanket. What he saw were bare stone walls, with several 
sconces mounted on them for torches. There was a tall, standing brazier, a 
wooden trunk for storing his doming, several crude wooden benches, a wooden 
table with a bowl and pitcher for washing up, and a couple of goblets for 
drinking. A crudely woven carpet covered part of the stone floor. There was no 
glass in the narrow windows, and he was suffering from mosquito bites. At least, 
he thought they were mosquitoes. In a world like this, he thought, they were 
liable to be almost anything. All in all, it was the most Spartan, primitive 
existence he had ever known.
He had already lost track of how long he'd been here. He estimated it to be 
about a month, perhaps a little more. Pamela must be frantic, he thought. He'd 
disappeared before, but only for a day or two at most, never for this long. He 
imagined that she'd probably called all the hospitals in London, and then gone 
to the police and filed a missing persons report. He was a valued asset to 
EnGulfCo, so they would probably have detectives looking for him, as well. Only 
they'd never find him. The days would stretch on into weeks, the weeks into 
months... how long would she wait? What must she be thinking?
In the quiet hours of the night, Brewster had always concentrated all his 
thoughts upon the task at hand, the next project, and the next one after that, 
the best way to design a solar heater, the most feasible way to install the 
plumbing, the problem of electricity and whether or not it would be possible to 
design some sort of crude light bulb, anything to keep him from thinking the 
thought that was going through his mind right now....
Suppose he never made it back? He could, quite conceivably, be stuck here in 
this primitive, medieval world for the remainder of his life. He tried to force 
his mind back to a more pragmatic frame. There was a great deal of interest in 
this world, a great deal to learn. It could easily become the research project 
of a lifetime. But of what use would it be if he could never bring any of this 
information home with him?
On one hand, he could probably have a good life here. With what he knew, he 
could become an important man in this world, another da Vinci, and he could 
become wealthy and respected. And there was much that he could do for these 
people. Yet, on the other hand, he did not belong here. He already had a life, a 
good life... a life he'd left behind. Chances were, he'd left that life behind 
forever.
A momentary feeling of panic overwhelmed him. And then he heard a rustling sound 
as Thorny, the little peregrine bush, uprooted itself from its planter and 
scuttled across the floor toward him. It stopped beside his bed and tentatively, 
very gently, stretched out its branches to touch him very lightly, so as not to 
scratch him. Almost like a puppy, sensing its owner's depression and offering a 
little love in an attempt to ease it.
Brewster stopped himself as he was about to stretch out his hand and stroke the 
thorn bush, as he would a dog. In spite of himself, he had to smile.
"Thanks, Thorny," he said. "You're a good friend. I feel better now."
Thorny's little, red-gold leaves seemed to perk up and it rustled its branches 
in response.
"Man's best friend is his bush," Brewster said with a chuckle. "I wish Pamela 
could see you. Well... who knows? With any luck, Thorny, maybe someday soon, she 
will."
In the meantime, like it or not, I'm here, he thought, and I might as well make 
the best of it. That meant not only doing what he could to improve his own 
situation, but to pull his own weight, as well. In some cases, he'd already done 
that. Bloody Bob had been so nearsighted when they'd first met that the brawny, 
aging brigand had been practically blind. Now, with the "magic visor" that 
Brewster had designed for him, with crudely ground glass lenses sandwiched 
between the two riveted bronze pieces that made up the visor, Bloody Bob could 
see. Even if these home-ground lenses weren't quite up to the modern 
optometrical standards Brewster was accustomed to, for Bloody Bob, it was like a 
miracle, and there was nothing the old brigand wouldn't do for the mighty 
sorcerer who had cured his blindness.
In Mick's case, the paybacks were still coming. Brewster owed a great deal to 
the muscular, little leprechaun. If not for Mick using his tremendous physical 
strength to rip open the buckled door, he never would have managed to get out of 
the crash-damaged time machine, and when the liquid oxygen tanks exploded, he 
would have gone up with it. On top of that, Mick had taken him in, and fed him, 
and given him the use of the stone keep. And it was Mick who had facilitated his 
reasonably smooth entry into this world, by introducing him to the brigands and 
the local fanners and vouching for his character, as well as his "magical 
abilities."
Yes, he certainly owed Mick a lot, but in some ways, he had already paid him 
back at least some of what he owed him. The still he had designed for Mick would 
dramatically increase his production of peregrine wine, brewed from mash derived 
from the roots of the ambulatory peregrine bushes, and the Franklin stove he'd 
shown Mick how to make for his own use in the keep would be another source of 
profit for the industrious leprechaun, who had already taken orders for more. 
The "many-bladed knife" production, which had seemed to generate the most 
excitement, was underway and soon their first batch of Swiss-Army-style knives 
would be complete. Mick clearly understood the benefit in all these things, just 
as he understood the profit to be made. Likewise, the brigands who were helping 
on these projects were equally enthusiastic. The problem was Black Shannon. She 
kept growing more and more restless and impatient.
He sighed and shook his head. "I just don't know what I'm going to do about that 
girl," he said to himself, out loud.
"Belike you are the only man who'd think of asking such a question," the 
gem-studded, golden chamberpot replied from its place on the chair across the 
room.
Brewster started and glanced at the pot sharply. "Damn, Brian, you startled me," 
he said.
"Sorry," the pot replied. " 'Twasn't my intention, I assure you."
"I know," said Brewster, getting up to put on his clothes. "I just can't seem to 
get used to the idea that you're actually a person, under an enchantment. I keep 
forgetting and thinking I'm alone in the room. Thoughtless of me. I'm really the 
one who should apologize."
"Think nothing of it, Doc," said the pot. "I'm quite accustomed to it."
"Well, just the same, I'm sorry for forgetting," Brewster said.
"Doc, my friend, believe me, you have nothing to apologize for," said the pot. " 
'Twas a long time I spent locked up within that wizard's trunk and I am grateful 
for a civilized man to speak with for a change. Especially one who never thinks 
of using me for the purpose for which chamberpots were all intended. Tis a 
wonderful thing, this toilet you've invented. For that alone, you have my 
eternal gratitude."
"Yes, well... thank you, Brian," Brewster said awkwardly.
"However, returning to the point at hand," the pot continued, " 'tis a mystery 
to me why Shannon is of such concern to you. You are a man, she is a wench, and 
a rather fetching one, at that. She also finds you comely. I say throw her down 
and mount the pony and she'll cease to trouble you."
Brewster shook his head. "It would take a better man than I to throw that 
'wench' down," he said. "Quite aside from the fact that 'throwing a woman down 
and mounting the pony,' as you put it, is a rather disrespectful way of treating 
the opposite sex, and not at all my sort of thing. On top of which, it's a 
rather simplistic solution and one that I doubt very much would work."
"It's never failed me before," the pot said.
"Yes, and look where it's gotten you," said Brewster.
"Aye, well... sad to say, 'tis a point that I can ill dispute," the pot replied.
Brewster stared at the enchanted werepot prince and marveled. "I still can't get 
over it," he said. "What's happened to you defies all known science. How a human 
being's molecular structure can be altered in such a radical fashion, not to 
mention the fact that you can speak, when you have no visible means of doing 
so... it's absolutely mind-boggling."
" 'Tis magic, Doc," the pot replied. "And 'tis in the laws of magic, and not 
your science, that you will find the solution that you seek. And I do earnestly 
hope you find it."
"One way or another, Brian, I'll find a way to turn you back, permanently," 
Brewster said. "I just don't know how, yet. It'll be the greatest challenge of 
my career. But if a man found a way to do this to you, then there has to be a 
way for me to find out how to reverse the spell."
"Then 'tis magic you shall need to learn, Doc," the pot said. "And from being 
kept by a succession of adepts- who, admittedly, failed to restore me-I've 
nevertheless learned a good deal about sorcery. I shall help you to the full 
extent of my abilities."
"Yes, well, it's past time I started doing something about that," said Brewster, 
as he pulled on his leather breeches and reached for his shirt. "I know I 
promised that I'd try to help you, but I've simply been so busy with the 
projects at the keep that I haven't had much time to devote to your problem. 
You've been very patient, Brian, and you deserve better."
He could almost hear the shrug in the pot's voice as it replied, " Tis a long 
time I've been the way I am, Doc. I can suffer it a while longer, if I must."
"I only wish Shannon had your attitude," said Brewster. "She's starting to 
become a problem. I think I know what the trouble is, too." He paused in lacing 
up his shirt. "Until I came along, Shannon was in charge and her leadership was 
undisputed. Of course, I would never presume to dispute her leadership, but at 
the same time, I can see where she'd perceive her position as being of secondary 
importance ever since I arrived."
"Which is as it should be with a woman and a man," said the pot.
"No, Brian, you're wrong," said Brewster. "Especially when it comes to a woman 
like Shannon. If she truly perceived me as her rival, how long do you think I'd 
last? I'd never survive a test of strength against her. And let's face it, 
without the brigands, we wouldn't be making any kind of progress here at all. I 
need to find some way to get her more involved. And at the same time, I promised 
her greater profit than she could achieve by stealing. I'm going to have to make 
good on that promise, and I'm going to have to do it soon, or else she'll take 
matters into her own hands and that'll be the end of it."
He slipped into his tweed sport coat and stood there, looking down at himself. 
He spread his arms out in a shrug. "Don't I look a sight?" he said. He was 
wearing rough, brown leather breeches and a loose-fitting shirt that laced up at 
the chest. On his feet, he wore soft leather boots. The houndstooth Harris tweed 
jacket with the leather elbow patches and brown leather buttons didn't quite go 
with the outfit, but his gray flannel trousers had worn out and his white Oxford 
shirt was soiled and frayed. "This kind of life is rather hard on clothes," he 
observed wryly.
"I think the wool doublet looks rather dashing," the pot replied. "Except for 
where you had to patch it where the sleeves had worn out at the elbows."
"They're not worn out," said Brewster. "The patches are really just for 
decoration. It's just the style."
"You mean that where you come from, the fashion is to make the clothing look 
worn out?" asked the pot.
"Well... I suppose it is," said Brewster. "The first thing the kids do when they 
buy a new pair of pants is rip the knees out."
"Why?" asked the pot.
"I really don't know," said Brewster with a frown. "Anyway, let's go see how 
things are coming along. Maybe I'll come up with some ideas about where Shannon 
could fit in. Unless I can get her involved in something that can put her 
abilities to good use and make her as enthusiastic as the others, she's going to 
keep feeling left out and she'll wind up growing resentful. And that's one lady 
whose resentment I would not want to incur."
He tucked the chamberpot under his arm and went downstairs. The little peregrine 
bush followed like a shadow, scrabbling after him on its twisted roots.
It was still quite early, but there was already a great deal of activity on the 
grounds of the keep. As Brewster crossed the great hall on the first floor of 
his tower, he was greeted by the brigands already gathered there, who rose to 
their feet respectfully as he came in.
"Good morning, Doc," said Fuzzy Tom, pausing in his ingestion of copious 
quantities of scrambled eggs to stand and incline his great, hairy head and face 
toward Brewster as he passed. The gesture was almost, but not quite, a bow. His 
greeting was echoed by Lonesome John and Winsome Wil, who likewise stood and 
inclined their heads respectfully.
"Morning, Tom, John, Wil," said Brewster, hastening past them to the kitchen, so 
they could sit back down and finish their breakfast.
He'd done nothing to encourage this formality and, in fact, he'd done his best 
to discourage it, but there seemed to be little he could do about it. It was, 
doubtless, Bloody Bob who was responsible.
The aging brigand had once been a famous warrior, serving under kings and dukes 
and princes, and it was in such service that he learned courtly behavior and the 
proper way to act around a liege lord. After Brewster had restored his sight by 
making a crude prescription visor for him, the brawny old ex-warrior had 
formally sworn allegiance to him and appointed himself Brewster's "loyal 
retainer." Reverting to his old habits, Bloody Bob had taken to addressing 
Brewster as "milord" and even dropping to one knee in his presence, a practice 
he gave up with some reluctance only when Brewster insisted he desist. However, 
he continued to display at least a token formality toward his "liege," something 
the other brigands had begun to emulate.
It was hardly the sort of thing that Shannon could fail to notice and Brewster 
was concerned that she might take it the wrong way. She was, after all, the 
leader of the brigands and she had won her position the hard way. Brewster 
didn't want her to think that he was trying to usurp her place. If Shannon 
started to regard him as a serious threat to her position, she was liable to 
take matters into her own hands and Brewster was under no illusions as to what 
would happen if that came to pass. The results, for him, were liable to be 
fatal.
He came into the kitchen, where Pikestaff Pat's wife, Calamity Jane, was busy 
supervising the preparation of the meals for the day. The kitchen, they had 
discovered, was the safest place for her. As her name implied, she was the most 
accident-prone woman Brewster had ever seen. Allowing her to wander about the 
construction site on the grounds of the keep was a sure fire way to guarantee 
disaster.
If there was a ladder within ten miles, Jane would find a way to trip over it 
and knock down whoever had climbed up it. If there was a bucket placed on some 
scaffolding, somehow it would contrive to fall at the exact moment that she 
passed, and in such a way that it would spill its contents all over her and wind 
up on her head, causing her to stumble and knock into something else, which 
would start a chain reaction of injuries among the workers that would bring 
everything to a halt. In the kitchen, however, her jinx did not seem to affect 
her for some reason and she was completely in her element, cooking up meals that 
would rival those served in the finest restaurants in London.
Saucy Cheryl was over at the cutting table, along with Juicy Jill and a couple 
of other fancy girls from Dirty Mary's Emporium and Hostelry, dressing out the 
spams for the soap-making operation. She saw Brewster come in, grinned, and 
waved a bloody cleaver at him. Jane stopped cutting up the vegetables to bring 
him his morning cup of tea. She handed him the steaming mug, watching his face 
with an anxious expression as he took a tentative first sip.
"Very good, Jane," Brewster said with a smile. "Thank you."
"Have I got it yet, Doc?" she asked hopefully.
"Well... no, not quite," Brewster replied, and when he saw the disappointed 
expression.on her face, he quickly added, "but you're getting closer all the 
time."
She smiled, satisfied that she was making progress, and went back to slicing up 
the veggies. Jane had set herself what seemed to be an impossible task, namely, 
trying to duplicate English breakfast tea without access to any tea leaves. It 
had started when Brewster once remarked, rather wistfully, that he missed having 
good English tea for breakfast and Jane had decided then and there that she'd 
find a way to duplicate the beverage.
She took it as a challenge to her culinary and homeopathic skills, and she kept 
experimenting with all sorts of strange herbal infusions. She had managed to 
come up with a rather pleasant and tasty brew that was somewhat reminiscent of 
black Ceylon tea, but there was something about the taste that still wasn't 
quite right. As a result of her efforts, she had developed a number of recipies 
for blends of herbal teas, which she kept in ceramic jars on the kitchen 
shelves, and having once seen her crushing up some peculiar-looking beetles with 
a mortar and pestle, Brewster had decided that he was not going to inquire about 
any of her ingredients.
The brigands were now taking daily tea breaks in the afternoon, when Jane would 
brew up a number of different blends and serve them in steaming pots in the main 
hall of the keep. They had helped her name them, too, and some of the more 
popular blends were Dragon's Breath Brew, Fairy Mist, and a tea that Jane 
herself became quite partial to and drank throughout the day, which her husband, 
Pikestaff Pat, had christened Jane's Addiction. It seemed to make her very giddy 
and Brewster wasn't sure what she put in it, but the one time he had tried it, 
he found himself starting to hallucinate and had avoided it ever since. Still, 
with all these teas being produced, Brewster thought there was a good chance 
they might find a way to market them, which would be yet another potential 
source of profit for the brigands.
They now had a number of projects underway that would produce marketable 
commodities. There were the "many-bladed knives," the first batch of which were 
almost ready for assembly. There was the soap-making operation, and Mick's 
"O'Fallon Stoves," and then there was the still, which was producing a good 
yield of peregrine wine-more properly, a sort of moonshine whiskey brewed from 
the boiled roots of peregrine bushes. Mick said it was a lot more potent now, 
something Brewster was willing to take his word for, as the old, cold-brewed 
stuff had been enough to render him nearly comatose.
The big question now was how would they market these commodities? The little 
village of Brigand's Roost was much too small to provide a proper market for 
their production, and most of the residents were already involved in their new 
cottage industry. The nearest city, according to Bloody Bob, was miles away, and 
Brewster did not think Shannon would react too well to the idea of her brigands 
being used as teamsters to haul the goods to market. Quite aside from which, 
every one of them had a price on his head, which could make deliveries rather 
precarious.
Developing a market posed yet another problem. There wasn't much that they could 
do in the way of advertising except, perhaps, for putting up some placards. 
Their business would have to depend primarily on word-of-mouth advertising. And 
that would take time.
So there it was again, thought Brewster. Time. The eternal enemy. No matter how 
he looked at it, it would take time to develop a market, and time for the 
profits to materialize, time he didn't really have. As far as Shannon was 
concerned, this "magical manufacturing process" of his was a bit too much like 
work. Nor would it take too long before the rest of the brigands began to 
realize that manufacturing, for all the wonders it produced, was remarkably 
similar to labor. And at that point, he might well wind up encountering the 
first concerted labor action in the twenty-seven kingdoms.
The other problem was, of course, that all this left him with no opportunity to 
search for his missing time machine. It could be anywhere. He hadn't really seen 
anything of this new world yet. He simply couldn't get away. Somehow, somewhere, 
there had to be a solution to these problems.
He went outside, past the boiling kettles where Robie McMurphy and Pikestaff Pat 
were rendering the spam fat into soap, and around the outside of the keep to the 
riverbank. Behind him, Thorny rustled along in his wake, like a faithful puppy 
dog with leaves.
Brewster walked along the riverbank, thinking to himself, trying to come up with 
some solutions to the problems that he faced. At a bend in the stream, the water 
rushed through a small ravine, where the rock outcroppings poked out of the clay 
banks and made a sort of miniature canyon. There was a pool down there, where 
the brigands often bathed, and Brewster climbed down to it and sat upon one of 
the large flat rocks above the water. He reached down and picked up a handful of 
pebbles from the clay slope and proceeded to toss them into the water as he 
contemplated this strange state of affairs.
Absently, he reached down again to pick up a few more stones to toss and his 
hand came up clutching a blocky lump of clay. He stared at it curiously and 
broke it up in his palm. It came apart in little square chunks.
"Doc! Doc, where are you?"
He looked up toward the sound. "Over here, Mick!" he called out.
A few moments later, the powerfully built leprechaun came bustling up, pushing 
his way through the underbrush. He stood up at the top of the small ravine, 
slightly out of breath.
"Doc?"
"Down here, Mick."
"What are you doin' down there?"
"Thinking," Brewster replied, as Mick clambered down to him. He gazed 
thoughtfully at the mineral material in his palm.
"I came to show you the first finished blades," said Mick, plopping down on the 
rock outcropping beside him. He seemed very excited as he reached into his belt 
pouch and withdrew several gleaming knife blades, as yet unassembled. He handed 
them to Brewster.
"Well?" he said anxiously. "What do you think?"
They were larger than the blades in Brewster's Swiss Army knife. Larger blades 
were slightly easier to make and Mick had thought that they would be more useful 
and appealing than the smaller blades. The main cutting blade was six inches 
long and the smaller one measured four inches. There was also a three-inch awl 
blade and a six-inch saw blade, as well. They were keeping it simple, using just 
those four blades, to begin with. They were the end result of weeks of unceasing 
toil on Mick's part, and he was justifiably proud of them.
To produce the steel, Brewster had designed a large, double-action bellows 
powered by a belt running off the water-wheel shaft. Mick, Robie, and Bloody Bob 
had painstakingly constructed it to Brewster's specifications, making it out of 
leather and a large wood frame. It took up almost the entire room where the 
grinding stones were, so the milling room of the keep had now also become Mick's 
second smithy.
The bellows functioned like a piston, pushing air through the furnace in both 
directions through a ceramic pipe that came up around the crucible and vented 
through the ceiling. To turn it off, it was necessary to disconnect the crude, 
yet effective, rosined belt made from plaited vines. Pig iron was heated in the 
crucible to the melting point, and the impurities were then removed by adding 
lime to the molten iron, which resulted in a huge flash of smoke and flame going 
up the smokestack. When the smoke dissipated, air was blown over the mixture to 
add carbon dioxide and when there were only small flames left burning atop the 
molten iron, it was poured out into the molds, where it solidified into steel.
Without nickel, molybdenum, and chromium, they could not make stainless steel, 
of course, but what they did get was a fairly good grade of steel that would not 
rust if it was kept oiled and properly cared for. Mick had originally balked at 
the idea of using coal, because he said it made "dirty iron," metal with 
impurities. He had always used charcoal in his foundry, but Brewster showed him 
how to make coke by preburning coal, burying it, and burning it for a couple of 
days in a reduced oxygen atmosphere. The impurities were thereby burned off, 
resulting in coke, which burned hotter and simplified the making of steel.
Once the steel was solidified in the molds, the next step was to take the blades 
out for polishing and sharpening, which was done before the tempering process, 
so that the crystals wouldn't break when the blades were sharpened, thereby 
enabling them to hold an edge better. The blades were then heated until they 
were red-hot and plunged into oil. Finally, they were wiped down and polished on 
a wheel run by a leather belt. The wheel itself was made of iron, with leather 
glued to it for burling. Brewster held the end result in his hands. All that 
remained now was for the pieces to be riveted together with the handles and the 
spacers.
"Beautiful, Mick," said Brewster, admiring his handiwork. "An excellent job. 
Outstanding. Very nice, indeed." He gave the blades back to Mick.
Mick beamed with pride. "The best blades I've ever forged," he said with a huge 
grin. "Truly, Doc, your magical knowledge has improved my craft beyond all my 
expectations! Think of the swords and daggers I shall be able to make now! 
S'trewth, there will be no armorer anywhere in the twenty-seven kingdoms to 
compare with Mick O'Fallon!"
"I'm glad, Mick," Brewster said. "It was the very least I could do for all the 
kindness you've shown me."
"Aye, and 'tis the better part of the bargain I've received," said Mick. "Sure 
and 'twas a great day for Mick O'Fallon when you arrived in your magic chariot."
"And I have yet to find the one that's missing," Brewster said.
"Never fear, Doc, 'twill turn up. You'll see. You've got Rory flying over the 
forest, keepin' his dragon eye out for it, and he's told the fairies to be on 
the lookout for it, too. We'll find it, never you mind."
"I hope so, Mick," said Brewster. "I certainly hope so."
"Aye, well, in the meantime, things are coming along splendidly," the leprechaun 
replied. "Now all we need to do is decide what material we'll be using for the 
handles. Gold, perhaps? Or maybe silver? Faith, and that's all been done before, 
though. For such a wondrous many-bladed knife, the handles must be something 
truly special and unique. Unicorn horn, perhaps? Of course, that wouldn't be in 
plentiful supply...."
Brewster stared thoughtfully at the broken-up mineral lumps he'd dropped. He 
reached down and picked them up again.
Mick stared at him with a puzzled expression. "What's that you've got there, 
Doc?" His eyes grew wide when he saw what Brewster had picked up. "Faith, Doc, 
and 'tis just clay!"
"Not clay, Mick," Brewster replied. "Bauxite."
Mick frowned. "Box-ite?"
Brewster smiled. "Yes, Mick, bauxite." He glanced around at the sloping ravine. 
"And it seems as though we've got a plentiful supply."
"I don't understand, Doc," Mick said, still puzzled.
"You will," said Brewster. He clapped the leprechaun on his muscular shoulder. 
"Mick... how'd you like to learn how to make aluminum?"
 
CHAPTER FOUR
 
As Teddy the troll dragged the hapless, screaming prisoner across the floor, 
Warrick stood watching with his arms folded, frowning in concentration. It was 
difficult to concentrate with all that screaming going on, but he was getting 
used to it. What he wasn't used to was the frustration that he felt.
Each time a subject was strapped into the device, and Warrick spoke the spell 
that activated it, there was a crackling of energy and a peculiar stench, 
followed by an annoying clap of thunder that had a tendency to break all the 
glassware in the sanctorum, and then the subject disappeared. Thus far, nothing 
Warrick had done had succeeded in bringing any of the subjects back, 
consequently, there was no way of knowing where they had disappeared to.
Warrick stood back from the device each time he activated it, and when the 
process was complete, he approached it once again and cautiously glanced inside, 
where he could see that some of the symbols displayed upon the control panel of 
the time machine had changed mysteriously, but he had no idea what any of it 
meant.
"Control panel?" said Warrick, frowning. "What is a control panel?"
Teddy paused in his task of strapping in the struggling prisoner and glanced at 
his master uneasily.
"Were you talking to me, Master?" he said.
"No," snapped Warrick irritably. "Get on with your work."
"Yes, Master," said Teddy, with an apprehensive glance up toward the ceiling.
"Noooo!" screamed the prisoner as Teddy strapped him in. "No, please! Don't! 
Don't kill me, Master Warrick, please, I beg you! I'll do anything, anything, I 
swear it!"
"Oh, do be quiet!" Warrick said, with an abrupt, sorcerous gesture toward the 
prisoner. The prisoner jerked as if struck, then fell unconscious. Teddy 
finished the task of strapping him in and hastily backed away from the machine. 
It frightened him, not only because everyone he strapped into it kept 
disappearing, never to be seen again, but because Warrick himself hesitated to 
come too close to it. And anything that made Warrick nervous made Teddy doubly 
so.
"It does not make me nervous," Warrick protested.
"What, Master?" Teddy asked.
"I am merely exercising proper caution," Warrick said.
"What, Master?"
"I was not speaking to you, Teddy," Warrick replied.
"Ah. Sorry, Master."
"My wand," said Warrick.
Teddy simply stood there, staring at the time machine with nervous anticipation.
Warrick cleared his throat. "I said, my wand."
Teddy remained motionless.
"My wand, you misbegotten wart hog!"
Teddy jumped, startled. "Oh! Forgive me, Master, I thought you were speaking to 
the one you call the narrator again."
He hurried over to the table to fetch his master's wand while Warrick sighed 
heavily and shook his head. "You are making my life very difficult, you know," 
he said.
"I am sorry, Master, I do not mean to," Teddy said, handing him his wand.
"No, not you, Teddy, I was speaking to the narrator."
Teddy bit down on a hairy knuckle. This whole thing with his master speaking to 
the invisible narrator all the time was making him very uneasy and confused. He 
was starting to develop a nervous tic. Not to mention the effect that it was 
having on the narrator.
"Well, 'twould make matters a great deal easier if you were simply to tell me 
what I wish to know," said Warrick.
"And what would that be, Master?" Teddy asked.
Warrick rolled his eyes. "Not you, Teddy, the narrator!"
"Oh. Sorry, Master."
"And stop doing that!"
"Stop doing what, Master?" Teddy asked.
"No, Teddy, not you, the narrator! I was speaking to the narrator! Each time I 
address a comment to him, he makes you reply, thereby avoiding the necessity of 
answering me."
"He makes me reply? You mean, I am being con-trolled?" asked Teddy, glancing 
nervously from side to side and wringing his hairy hands with concern.
"You see? He's done it again! Now cease, blast you, and face me like a man! 
Teddy, leave us alone."
The little troll hesitated uncertainly.
"No, you don't," said Warrick. "Teddy, go to your room. Now."
"But, Master...."
"I said, go to your room! At once, do you hear? And none of this hesitating 
nonsense. I will send for you when I need you. Now come along. And before the 
little troll could think to reply, the wizard took him by the arm and walked him 
to the door, opening it and urging him on through, then closing it behind him."
That was sneaky.
"You left me with no other choice," said Warrick with a crafty smile. "And none 
of this cutting to another scene business, either. I'm wise to that game."
All right. You win. For the moment. So... what is it you want?
"You know very well what I want. I wish to know the secret of the time machine," 
said Warrick.
Now you know perfectly well I can't tell you that. You already know a great deal 
more than you're supposed to. If you start finding things out in advance of the 
plot, you're really going to screw up the story.
"That is your problem, not mine," Warrick replied.
There was a loud knocking at the door.
"Forget it," Warrick said. "I'm not falling for it."
The knocking was repeated, louder this time.
"Sorry, 'twon't work," said Warrick. "You can put a squad of men at arms with 
battering rams out there for all I care. I am not budging from this spot until I 
receive an answer, so you might as well give it up."
Warrick yawned. He suddenly felt extremely tired. He'd been a long time without 
sleep and-
"Stop that," Warrick snapped. "I am not tired and I will sleep when I am damned 
good and ready."
In spite of himself, he felt his eyelids growing very heavy. He could barely 
keep them open. He-
"Oh, no, you don't! Warrick wasn't in the least bit sleepy. He suddenly felt a 
fresh, invigorating burst of energy and the narrator realized that 'twas 
pointless to resist. Despite himself, he felt the immeasurable strength of will 
the wizard brought to bear upon him and he felt irresistibly compelled to do the 
sorcerer's bidding."
No, he didn't.
"Protesting vainly, the narrator nevertheless felt his will weakening in the 
face of Warrick's power. Whether he wanted to or not, he was going to tell the 
sorcerer the secret of the time machine, who made it, and where it came from, 
and where-"
Without warning, the narrator typed in a space break and cut to another scene.
Sean MacGregor and his three henchmen dismounted in front of the roadside 
hostelry and tavern, and not a moment too soon, either. They were dusty from 
riding all day and the small hostelry looked like a good place to spend the 
night. The wooden sign hanging over the door identified the hostelry as The Dew 
Drop Inn, which testified to the fact that cliches not only withstand the test 
of time, but cross its boundaries, as well.
There were several horses tied up outside at the rail and, by the look of them, 
they did not belong to peasants. Their tack was not only lightweight and 
functional, to facilitate fast traveling, but well-made and expensive, as well. 
Sean MacGregor did not fail to note this as they tied up their own horses and 
went inside. The three brothers went in first, making a beeline straight for the 
bar. MacGregor stopped just inside the doorway and looked around.
It was a simple, country roadside inn, with planked wood flooring stained by 
years of spills, a rough oak bar ringed with the circular stains of wet mugs of 
ale being placed upon it, and a roaring fire in the hearth, over which hung a 
large black kettle in which stew simmered. The tables and the benches were all 
made of heavy, rough-hewn redwood; the better to withstand the occasional 
disagreement among the patrons.
The man behind the bar was large, ruddy-faced and heavily bearded, with shaggy 
brown hair that was liberally streaked with gray. He looked quite capable of 
taking care of any trouble, despite his years, and his face bore the 
disinterested, noncommittal expression of a man who'd seen most everything at 
one time or another. However, he wasn't the one who caught MacGregor's 
attention. Mac was far more interested in the group of men sitting together at a 
table in the corner, near the hearth.
While Hugh, Dugh, and Lugh were interested in nothing more than quaffing copious 
quantities of ale, MacGregor took a long look at the men huddled together at the 
corner table. And they, in turn, took a long look at him, as well. There were 
six of them, and they were a rough and surly looking lot. Several of them had 
scars upon their faces and all of them had shifty eyes. They were all bristling 
with weapons, too. MacGregor saw one of them spot the Guild badge on his tunic 
and nudge the others.
A pretty, young, dark-haired serving wench was busy filling several plates of 
stew on a wooden tray, which she then proceeded to carry over to the group in 
the corner. She did not fail to notice MacGregor as she crossed the room, for 
Mac was a rugged and good-looking man whom pretty, young serving wenches 
invariably found attractive, as this one apparently did. She gave him a coy look 
and an inviting smile, which he returned. He took a table on the opposite side 
of the room, where he could have a clear view of the others, and left the three 
brothers to their chug-a-lugging contest. A moment later, the serving wench came 
over to him.
"Welcome, good sir," she said, with a dazzling smile, which is a required 
attribute in any pretty, young serving wench. It goes with the long, flowing 
hair, the dimples, the clear blue eyes, and the saucy wiggle. "And what would be 
your fancy on this fine evening?"
The way she said it suggested that she might not necessarily be referring to 
anything on the menu, which was probably just as well, as menus hadn't been 
invented yet. This was hardly a five-star dining establishment and the deal was 
that if you didn't like whatever was simmering in the pot, then you were pretty 
much left with whatever was fermenting in the keg. Either way, Sean MacGregor 
wasn't particularly choosey, at least not when it came to food, although he did 
draw the line at eating spam.
"My fancy on this evening would be a bowl of your fine stew, a tankard of good 
ale, and that twinkle in your eye, my love, together with your smile, which is 
nearly sustenance enough all by itself."
Now a line like that would normally produce a rather pained expression in the 
average modem waitress, and possibly even a tart rejoinder, but that's only 
because the fine art of courtly flirtation has, unfortunately, become outmoded. 
Chances were, however, that even a modern waitress would have reacted favorably 
to such a line coming from a man like Sean MacGregor, because he was a fine, 
dashing figure of a man, indeed, rather like a cross between Errol Flynn and 
Sean Connery, with a bit of Harrison Ford thrown in, and his delivery would have 
had Shakespearean actors calling their vocal coaches in despair. The knives in 
the crossed bandoliers didn't hurt, either.
"Why, thank you, kind sir," the serving wench replied, blushing prettily. "I do 
believe we have at least a bowl or two of stew left in the pot, and of the ale 
and the rest," she added with a wink, "you may drink your fill."
"Have a care, my love, I am a very thirsty man," MacGregor replied with a grin.
"Then I shall make every effort to see your thirst is quenched," the serving 
wench said, gazing directly into his eyes.
Ah, well, you just don't hear dialogue like that nowadays, unless you hang out 
with the Society for Creative Anachronism. Personally, I think it's the clothes. 
Lines like that simply don't play when you're wearing jeans and polyester. 
However, put on a rough-out leather doublet, some tight breeches, a pair of 
high, swashbuckling boots, and buckle on a blade or two, and the next thing you 
know, you'll be declaiming like Scaramouche. Unless, of course, you're rather 
dim, like Mac's three apprentice henchmen, who couldn't turn a phrase if it had 
power steering. They were already on their third pitcher, and trying to see 
which of them could belch the loudest.
"What is your name, my love?" MacGregor asked.
" 'Tis Lisa, good sir. And yours?"
"Sean MacGregor," he replied. "Tell me, Lisa, those men over at the corner 
table, have you ever seen any of them about before?" .
"Why, no, they are all strangers to me," she replied. And then she grimaced. 
"And a rather coarse lot they are, too."
"They haven't been giving you any trouble, have they?" asked MacGregor with a 
frown.
"Not really, but I have seen their sort before," said Lisa. "Mostly, they have 
been asking questions about some men they're seeking."
"What men?"
"Three men, they said, who were traveling together. One tall, with a long face 
and dark hair, one of medium height and balding, with a fringe of light-brown 
hair, and one with dark-red hair and a beard, who doesn't speak."
"Indeed?" MacGregor said. "And have you seen such men?"
Lisa drew closer. "Truth to tell, I do remember three such men who stopped here 
once," she said, "but I have told those buzzards nothing, for their rudeness and 
coarse ways."
"And it serves them right, too," said MacGregor. "Tell me, Lisa, when those 
three men were here, did they by any chance while away the time by playing 
chess?"
"Funny you should ask that," Lisa replied. "I do recall it, for they seemed 
upset that one of their game pieces had been lost. They asked me if I had a 
thimble they might borrow, so they could use it in its place."
"Would you know, by any chance, if it was this piece they were lacking?" asked 
MacGregor, removing the carved wooden knight from his pouch.
"Why, yes, I do believe 'twas a knight," said Lisa. "I heard two of them arguing 
about it, each blaming the other for its loss. Were they friends of yours, 
then?"
"Not exactly," said MacGregor, "but I am most anxious to make their 
acquaintance. Thank you, Lisa. You have been most helpful. And very charming, to 
boot."
"And you are a shameless flatterer, Sean MacGregor," she replied with a smile.
"I only speak the truth," he replied.
"Why is it that I think you only speak it rarely?" she responded with an arch 
look.
"Because 'tis true," said MacGregor. "You see? I am completely honest with you."
She laughed. "Go on with you."
She went over to the bar to draw a tankard of ale, giving a wide berth to the 
three brothers, who were beginning to have some trouble making a connection 
between the rims of their tankards and their lips. She brought the ale over to 
MacGregor, then went to get his stew. As she crossed the room, one of the men 
sitting at the corner table got up from his bench and sauntered over to 
MacGregor's table, his hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword.
"I see you wear the badge of the Assassin's Guild," the burly stranger said. He 
was a big man, powerfully built, with long brown hair hanging to his massive 
shoulders. His steely gaze flicked from MacGregor's face to the badge on his 
tunic, and back again. "And I also see it has a star upon it. Unless it be a 
counterfeit to impress pretty serving maids, that would make you Mac the Knife."
"My friends often call me Mac," MacGregor replied, "but I fear I do not know 
you, sir."
"The name is Black Jack," the stranger said. " Tis a name that is well-known in 
certain quarters."
"Indeed? And whose quarters would those be?" MacGregor asked innocently.
"You seek to mock me, sir?"
"I seek only enlightenment," MacGregor said.
"Well, then, perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me as to your business 
in these parts?"
"I fail to see where my business is any of yours," MacGregor replied.
"Well, then perhaps this will improve your vision," Black Jack replied, drawing 
his sword with lightning speed and holding its point to MacGregor's throat.
Mac remained seated, calmly gazing at the man before him. He did not even glance 
down toward the sword point held at his throat. The three brothers remained 
slumped over the bar, oblivious to what was going on behind them. The tavern 
keeper merely watched, his face expressionless, but Lisa gasped and dropped the 
bowl of stew that she was bringing to MacGregor. Her hand went to her mouth in 
alarm.
"I believe I see your point," MacGregor said calmly, taking a sip of ale. " Tis 
a bit too close for comfort, I might add."
"If I do not receive an answer very soon, the discomfort is liable to increase," 
said Black Jack, pressing home his point ever so slightly.
"Well, in that case, I suppose that I had best oblige you," MacGregor replied. 
"My business is with a client who has employed my services to seek out certain 
individuals."
"By any chance, would these be three individuals?" asked Black Jack while his 
companions watched intently from across the room.
"Perhaps," replied MacGregor, taking another sip of ale.
"And would one of them happen to be tall, with dark hair and a long face?"
"Perhaps," replied MacGregor, once again.
"And would another happen to be of medium height and balding, with a fringe of 
brown hair?"
"Perhaps," replied MacGregor, for the third time.
"And would the third happen to have dark-red hair, with a beard, and have been 
never heard to speak?"
MacGregor calmly sipped his ale. "Perhaps," he said, yet again.
"In that event, perhaps we seek the same three individuals," said Black Jack, 
his sword point never wavering from MacGregor's throat.
"Perhaps," MacGregor said.
"And since there is a handsome bounty on those individuals, which my friends and 
I hope to collect, perhaps it would be in my best interests if I were to 
eliminate any potential competitors. And if such a competitor happened to be the 
number-one-ranked member of the Assassin's Guild, then perhaps it would only add 
to my reputation if I were to dispatch him."
"Perhaps it would, if you were to succeed in such an effort," said MacGregor, 
ignoring the sword held at his throat as he once again raised the tankard to his 
lips.
"Well, considering that I have you at something of a disadvantage, then perhaps 
I shall," replied Black Jack with a smile.
"Perhaps not," MacGregor said. He took another sip, then suddenly spat a spray 
of ale into Black Jack's face. As Black Jack recoiled instinctively, MacGregor 
slammed his tankard down, pinning Black Jack's blade beneath it to the table.
With a curse, Black Jack jerked back his blade, which gave MacGregor time to 
send his bench crashing to the floor as he sprang to his feet and drew his own 
sword.
"You shall pay dearly for that!" snarled Black Jack.
MacGrcgor grinned at him. "Come and collect," he said.
As their blades clashed, Lisa cried out and Black Jack's companions quickly rose 
to join the fray. However, all this commotion finally awoke the three brothers 
to the fact that something was going on behind them.
Hugh turned around as MacGregor engaged Black Jack and saw the five men getting 
up and reaching for their weapons. "Fight!" he yelled out gleefully, and hurled 
his empty tankard with such force that the man whose head it struck was killed 
instantly. The sturdy tankard only suffered minor damage.
Dugh took three running steps and leapt up on a table top, from which he 
launched himself in what would have been a graceful swan dive, except that Dugh 
was built less like a swan than like a grizzly bear, and bears aren't really all 
that graceful. In any case, there was nothing graceful about the way he landed, 
right on top of two of Black Jack's companions, and they all went tumbling to 
the floor.
Lugh was the slowest to react, which gave the man nearest him time to lunge at 
him with his blade. Lugh tried to dodge, but he was still a little slow and the 
blade penetrated his shoulder, missing his heart, which had been the swordsman's 
intended target. Lugh grunted, grabbed the exposed part of the blade and kicked 
his attacker in the groin. The man's eyes got all bulgy and he made a sound like 
a pig being fed into a meat grinder as he doubled up and clutched himself.
"That hurt," said Lugh, pulling the sword out of his shoulder and proceeding to 
belabor his attacker about the head with its ornate, basket hilt.
That left one man to face Hugh, and he decided on the spur of the moment that he 
didn't really feel like facing such a large opponent at close quarters. He 
reached for his dagger, drew it, and flipped it around so that he could hold it 
by the point and throw it. Unfortunately for him, this rather showy gesture gave 
Hugh time enough to snatch up a bench and hold it up as a shield just as he 
threw his knife. The blade stuck in the bench, which Hugh then proceeded to use 
as a battering ram, running at his opponent with it.
Caught in the act of trying to draw his sword, the fifth man screamed as Hugh 
slammed into him, benchfirst, and carried him back against the wall.
Meanwhile, without his friends to support him, Black Jack suddenly found he had 
his hands full. Not that he wasn't a good swordsman, for he was, but Sean 
MacGregor had yet to meet his match and Black Jack just wasn't it. He retreated 
rapidly before MacGregor's dancing blade, parrying like mad, and if he'd had 
time to think, he would have thought that instead of wasting time earlier with 
all that snappy repartee, he should have simply run MacGregor through.
"What, no more snappy repartee?" MacGregor taunted him as he advanced. With a 
deft twist of the wrist, he hooked Black Jack's blade and sent it flying across 
the room. This time, with his sword point at Black Jack's throat, he backed him 
up against the bar. "Now... about this reputation of yours," MacGregor said.
As MacGregor spoke, Dugh was busily smashing his two antagonists' heads 
together. They were making very satisfying, thunking sounds, but Dugh had a 
rather limited attention span and he was growing bored of this game. He decided 
to see if his brothers needed any help, and so he flung his two stunned 
antagonists away from him, one in either direction. Unfortunately, the one he 
flung off to his right happened to strike MacGregor, knocking him right off his 
feet. Black Jack was quick to take advantage of this fortuitous reprieve by 
kicking MacGregor as he went down and then bolting for the door, snatching up 
his sword en route.
"You've not heard the last of Black Jack!" he cried, and men he ran out the 
door, mounted up, and galloped off down the road.
"Somehow, I knew he was going to say that," said MacGregor, wincing with pain as 
he pushed himself up to a sitting position.
"How did you know that, Mac?" Dugh asked, giving him a hand up.
"Because that's what they always say," MacGregor replied with a sour grimace. 
"Oh, and by the way, in the future, when you decide to toss someone around, do 
check to see which way you're tossing him, will you?"
"I'm sorry, Mac," said Dugh, looking down at the floor.
"Want we should chase him for you, Mac?" asked Lugh.
"I shouldn't bother," MacGregor replied. "He has a fast horse and he's had a 
good head start." He frowned. "What's making that noise?"
He turned around and saw Hugh still bashing away with the bench. He had his man 
pinned up against the wall and he would pull the bench back, allowing the man to 
fall forward just a little bit, and then slam him back against the wall with it 
once more, which was producing a sound not unlike that made by a washing machine 
with sneakers in it. (I know, the analogy is out of period, but that's exactly 
what it sounded like.)
MacGregor walked over to Hugh and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hugh... I think 
he's dead."
Hugh pulled the bench back and the bloody corpse collapsed to the floor.
"Oh," said Hugh, sounding a trifle disappointed.
"One of the things you'll need to know, Hugh, if you're ever going to be a good 
assassin, is that you only need to kill somebody once," said MacGregor. "Once is 
usually sufficient. Now then, I don't suppose any of these chaps are still 
alive?"
"I think this one's still breathin', Mac," said Dugh, bending over one of the 
prostrate figures.
MacGregor turned him over with his foot. He grimaced at the sight of the man's 
face, which had been dramatically rearranged. "Well, I fear this one won't be 
talking any time soon," he said. "Pity. We might have learned a thing or two."
"I'm sorry, Mac," said Dugh. "Did I hit the fella too hard?"
"Oh, well, it couldn't be helped, I suppose," MacGregor replied. "You see, lads, 
in the future, if we are ever set upon by unknown assailants, we must try to 
keep at least one of them alive, and preferably in some shape to answer 
questions. That way, we can find out who they are, whom they are working for, 
and how much they know."
"Gee, Mac, this assassin stuff is really complicated," Lugh said.
"Aye, well, never fear, you'll get the hang of it eventually," MacGregor said. 
"You did well, lads, you did very well, indeed. And, fortunately, we are not 
left completely in the dark about this situation. We do know that the man I 
fought, presumably their leader, is named Black Jack, and from what he told me, 
it seems that they were working freelance, in the hopes of collecting the bounty 
on the men we seek."
"You mean, they were working for Warrick, too?" said Hugh.
"Not exactly," replied MacGregor. "You see, while Warrick the White keeps me on 
retainer, he has also offered a bounty for these men he's seeking, which 
increases the odds of those men being found, since enterprising men such as our 
friends here will attempt to find them on their own in order to collect the 
bounty."
"But I thought we were supposed to find them," Dugh said.
"Indeed, we are," said MacGregor, "but we are not the only ones looking, you 
see. The bounty increases Warrick's chances of having someone find those men, 
but it does make our job a bit more complicated, in that we shall be competing 
with everyone else who's looking for them."
Lugh shook his head. "It doesn't seem right to me," he grumbled.
" 'Tis not meant to be right to you," MacGregor replied. " 'Tis meant to be 
right to the client."
"Difficult work, this," Hugh observed.
"Aye, well, if it wasn't, then everybody would be doing it, wouldn't they?" 
MacGregor said.
"Who's going to pay for all this, then?" the tavern keeper asked, surveying the 
damage to his establishment, which was relatively minor, all things considered. 
The Stealers Tavern was still undergoing repairs, from the three brothers' last 
visit.
MacGregor bent down and quickly searched the man lying at his feet. He found the 
man's purse and examined its contents. "These fellows will, I think," he said. 
"I'm sure that, between them, they have more than enough to compensate you for 
your loss."
The tavern keeper grunted and proceeded to relieve the other bodies of their 
purses.
Lisa came up to MacGregor, her eyes shining. "I thought for certain he was going 
to kill you," she said. "You were wonderful!"
"I still am," MacGregor replied with a wink. "This Black Jack fellow, I don't 
suppose you've ever heard of him before? He seemed to think he had some sort of 
reputation."
"Aye, that he does," said Lisa. "I never knew his name, nor laid eyes on him 
before, but sure and I've heard of him."
"Indeed? What have you heard?"
"He is a thief, a brigand, and a cutthroat," Lisa replied. "And not above any 
dubious enterprise that promises to bring him profit. 'Tis said he killed a man 
once in Pittsburgh, in The Stealers Tavern, merely for breaking wind beside 
him."
"Mmmm. Well, considering the offal served for food there, I can't say as I blame 
him," said MacGregor. "So he frequents The Stealers, does he? That must be where 
he heard about the bounty on those men we seek. And now that his friends have 
succeeded in delaying us, he's got himself a good head start."
"Not really," replied Lisa with a smile. "He galloped off down the wrong road. 
The three men you're seeking took the east fork."
"Did they, indeed?" MacGregor grinned. "Well, in that case, there's no great 
rush, is there? We'll spend the night and take the east fork first thing in the 
morning. Innkeeper, we'll be needing rooms for the night!"
"Mine is at the end of the hall," said Lisa softly.
 
CHAPTER FIVE
 
Mick O'Fallon had no idea what Brewster Doc was up to this time, and he had no 
idea what this "aluminum" was that they were going to make, but it was shaping 
up to be yet another mysterious and complicated project. Until he had met Doc, 
he had never heard the word "project" before. He had heard the word 
"projectile," which referred to something that was launched through the air as a 
weapon, such as an arrow fired from a bow or a large stone hurled by a catapult. 
Doc, however, used this word "project" in an entirely different sense, referring 
to various alchemical and sorcerous works. Perhaps, thought Mick, it had 
something to do with the energies projected through the ether in order to bring 
these works about. In any case, the energy required for Doc's sorcery had to be 
prodigious, because each time he launched one of his projects, it usually meant 
a lot of work for everyone, especially for Mick O'Fallon.
Even the brigands who worked with him had to admit that these sorcerous projects 
of Doc's entailed a lot more sweat than they were used to shedding. 
Nevertheless, they took part without complaint, partly because there were few 
people who could boast of participating in sorcerous works, and partly because 
they were curious to see what wondrous miracle Doc would produce this time.
While Mick worked with a team of assistants at his smithy to produce the metal 
vessels Brewster required, another team of brigands had been organized to 
collect the grayish substance Brewster had called bauxite. Much of it they found 
on the surface of the banks in the ravine, but they also had to dig in order to 
find more. Brewster had taught them how to recognize it and while one group 
pursued that task, another worked to grind the bauxite up with mortars and 
pestles. This ground-up bauxite was then mixed with potash, ground limestone, 
and water, which produced something Brewster called "sodium hydroxide." For 
simplicity, Brewster had said that it could simply be called a "caustic soda," 
but everyone enjoyed saying "sodium hydroxide," because it sounded magical and 
powerful.
The ground bauxite was then mixed with a solution of this sodium hydroxide in 
the first of the vessels Mick had made, which Brewster called a "pressure tank."
"In this heated vessel, which is a crude sort of pressure cooker," Brewster had 
explained, as everyone gathered around, "the ore will be dissolved under steam 
heat and pressure. The sodium hydroxide will react with the hydrated aluminum 
oxide of the bauxite to form a solution of sodium aluminate. The insoluble 
impurities, which will look like red mud because of the iron oxide content, will 
settle to the bottom. The remaining solution will then pass into the second 
vessel, the one with the pressure release valve, which is called the blow-off 
tank, because it lets the steam out, you see. The cloth filters we're using will 
have to be changed each time, because they're going to get all clogged up, but 
that shouldn't really present a problem.
"We're actually going to be using a somewhat simplified process," he continued, 
"but then we're not really making a high, commercial grade of aluminum, so I 
don't think we'll need a whole series of reducing tanks and heat exchangers and 
precipitators. We'll sort of be playing this by ear, and we may have to modify 
the process somewhat, but it should work. Once we have the alumina distilled, 
we'll scrape it off the sides of the tank and put it into the reduction pot, 
that's the one we've lined with carbon, you see, and then we'll melt the 
cryolite in it. That's the white substance I found in Mick's laboratory. 
Eventually, we'll probably need more of it, but Mick assures me he can get more 
from the dwarves who work the mines. We'll run electricity through it using the 
generator and the voltage regulator I've salvaged from my time machine... my, 
uh, magic chariot, that is. We'll use carbon rods for the anodes and put about 
750 volts of direct current through it. That should do the trick. The aluminum 
will melt and sink down to the bottom, and the impurities will float up to the 
top. After that, all that's left will be to draw the aluminum off the bottom and 
pour it directly into the molds. At that point it should be pure enough to work, 
and that's all there is to it."
They had all simply stared at him, without comprehending a word of what he'd 
said. It all sounded terribly impressive, but no one had a clue as to what any 
of it meant.
"Well," said Brewster with a shrug, "if it sounds confusing, don't worry about 
it. Not everyone can be expected to understand this kind of sorcery, you know. 
It's a special kind of sorcery called 'science.' You'll see. Once we get all the 
bugs worked out of the process, it should work just fine."
"Seems like a terrible lot of trouble to go to just to make handles for the 
knives," said Mick dubiously. " 'T'would be a lot easier simply to use horn."
"Well, you said you wanted something special, didn't you?" Brewster replied. 
"Besides, aluminum will be a lot more practical, and it'll probably make the 
knives more valuable, too. It certainly won't be something people will see every 
day. And we'll be able to use it for other things, besides. You'll see. It may 
be a lot of trouble, but I think it will be worth it."
Brewster didn't tell Mick the main reason they were doing it was that he simply 
got caught up in the idea and wanted to see it done. And Mick didn't tell 
Brewster that his biggest misgiving was that the process would use up all his 
alchemite, which Brewster had called by the strange name of "cryolite." 
Apparently, thought Mick, they had a lot of different names for things in 
Brewster's Land of Ing.
One of the first things Brewster had done, after he moved into the keep, was ask 
Mick if he could take an inventory of the alchemical laboratory. Mick had agreed 
without hesitation, because although, in a sense, it was his laboratory, in 
another sense, it really wasn't. Most everything that it contained had belonged 
to that unknown, bygone sorcerer who had once lived at the keep at some point in 
the past, farther back than anyone in Brigand's Roost could remember. And what 
few things Mick had added to it had not really amounted to a hill of beans. 
Despite all the things he had mixed together, burned, melted, and reduced, he 
had come no closer to the secret of the Philosopher's Stone than when he'd 
started. Doc's knowledge, on the other hand, had been more than amply 
demonstrated and it was clearly far more extensive than that of any adept Mick 
had ever heard of. Perhaps even more extensive than that of the Grand Director 
of the Guild himself. So Mick was anxious for the opportunity to learn 
everything he could.
However, although he'd said nothing to Brewster, he had some anxiety about 
letting him use up all the alchemite. He could, indeed, get more from the 
dwarves who worked the mines up in the mountains, but it would cost him dearly. 
In order to obtain the supply he already had, it had been necessary for him to 
make half a dozen of his finest blades, designed to dwarf proportion, and at 
that, he'd negotiated long and hard to talk them down from the dozen blades 
they'd first demanded. Still, he would have paid even that price, had it been 
necessary, for the dwarves normally sold all their alchemite to the Master 
Alchemists of the Treasury Department of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild.
When Mick had found out, quite by accident, that the dwarves regularly supplied 
this substance to the Master Alchemists of the Treasury Department, he had 
correctly deduced that alchemite was one of the necessary ingredients in the 
magical process that was the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, so he had bought 
some under the table, as it were. Yet, no matter how he'd tried, he still hadn't 
been able to discover the secret of the spell. He had used up about one-third of 
the supply he'd bought, and now it appeared that Doc was going to use up all the 
rest in this aluminum-making project. And Mick didn't even know what this 
aluminum was.
Nevertheless, he hadn't been able to refuse him. In the short time they had 
known each other, Mick, never the most sociable of individuals, had developed a 
greater liking for Doc than for anyone he'd ever known. And his respect for 
Doc's knowledge increased daily.
Thanks to Doc, he was now making better blades than he'd ever hoped to make, and 
in time, Mick was convinced that he'd achieve a reputation as the finest armorer 
in the twenty-seven kingdoms. And thanks to the still Doc had invented, Mick was 
now making more peregrine wine than he'd ever been able to make before, and it 
was a superior distillation, easily twice as potent as the wine produced by his 
old method. Soon, they would be bringing it to market outside Brigand's Roost 
and Mick had little doubt that he'd be able to sell all the wine that he could 
make. Doc had expressed the opinion that it shouldn't really be called wine, but 
that it should properly be called a "whiskey," whatever that was. "It's strong 
enough to knock you out," Doc had said. "It's a regular Mickey Finn." And then 
and there, Mick had decided that when they brought the peregrine wine to market, 
he would call it "Mickey Finn."
Privately, Doc had confessed to him that he wasn't really an adept, but for all 
his denials, Mick couldn't understand why Doc persisted in claiming he knew 
nothing of true sorcery. If these "scientific works" he had embarked upon 
weren't sorcery, what were they?
"Mick," he said, "you and Brian are the only ones to whom I've told the truth, 
that I'm not really a sorcerer. I know you find that difficult to accept, 
because you've seen me do some things that seem like sorcery to you, but the 
fact is that anyone could do those things if they knew how."
"Aye, well, I suppose that anyone could do magic if they knew how," Mick 
replied. "Knowing how's the trick."
"I don't seem to be getting my point across," said Brewster. "All right, let's 
try it this way. Of the things I've told you about the world I come from, what 
seems to impress you the most is the airplane. Granted, it sounds very 
impressive, and I suppose it is to someone who's never considered the 
possibility of a flying machine. However, the fact is that there's really 
nothing magical about it. These airplanes are powered by devices called jet 
engines. The jet engines propel the airplane along a runway, which is a very 
hard, straight road. Now, as the speed of the airplane increases, the force of 
the air rushing over its wings eventually causes it to lift, which allows the 
plane to fly. Now to you, this undoubtedly sounds like magic, but in fact, it 
isn't. It's merely science, the knowledge and application of certain natural 
laws."
He unrolled a scroll, picked up a quill, dipped it in the inkwell, and began to 
draw. First he sketched an airplane, then a diagram of the engine.
"This is merely a rough sketch, you understand," he said. "The actual engine is 
a bit more complicated than what I'm drawing here. And it's much larger, of 
course. Now this part here is called the turbofan. As its blades turn, they suck 
air into the engine. The air then enters devices called compressors, which raise 
the pressure of the air inside them, which then flows into the combustion 
chambers. Fuel is sprayed into the combustion chambers, where it is mixed with 
the air and ignited. The hot gases resulting from the combustion pass through 
devices called turbines, which drive the compressors and the turbofan, then out 
the rear nozzle of the engine, which forces the airplane forward. It rolls along 
the runway on large wheels, and as the force increases, the speed of the 
airplane increases. As it moves forward faster and faster, the air rushes over 
the wings. Now, if we look at one of these wings from the side, it looks like 
this."
He made another drawing, a cross section of a wing, as Mick watched intently.
"Now you will notice that on the bottom, the wing is flat, while on the top, it 
is curved. As the engine drives the airplane forward, air flows around the 
wings. This is called the airfoil principle. Some air flows around the bottom of 
the wing, some flows around the top. But because the top of the wing is curved, 
the air that flows over the top of the wing moves faster than the air flowing 
beneath it, which makes the pressure of the air greater beneath the wing than 
above it. This pressure forces the wing upward, and lifts the plane, allowing it 
to fly. There's nothing magical about it. It requires no spells or incantations, 
merely a knowledge of the science of physics."
Mick seemed unconvinced. "This science seems as powerful as any sorcery I ever 
heard of," he said.
"Well, perhaps," said Brewster. "However, I happen to be a very well respected 
scientist, yet I can't even begin to understand how Brian was turned into a 
chamberpot. It goes against all the known laws of science. Where I come from, 
people would say it was impossible."
"I only wish it were," said the chamberpot wryly.
"If you would teach me more of this science," Mick said, "I shall teach you all 
the magic that I know, which may not be very much, I admit, but with my slight 
skill and Brian's knowledge, gained from several lifetimes of living with 
adepts, we could instruct you in the methods of the Craft to the best of our 
ability."
"I would like that very much, Mick," Brewster said. "Not only because I'd like 
to find a way to free Brian of his enchantment, but because as much as science 
seems to fascinate you, magic fascinates me."
"If you ask me, this science still sounds very much like sorcery," said Mick. 
"Perhaps science is merely sorcery of a different sort."
"I guess it all depends on how you look at it," said Brewster with a shrug. 
"Maybe sorcery is merely science of a different sort. And as a scientist, it's 
my job to study it."
"Do you think you could help us make one of these airplanes?" Mick said.
Brewster chuckled. "Well, now, that would be a rather tall order. I don't know 
about jet engines, but I suppose it might be possible to devise some sort of 
primitive steam engine, perhaps. If we could come up with a way to make an 
internal combustion engine, it might even be possible to make a sort of 
ultralight. But first we need to make aluminum."
When the aluminum-making apparatus was properly set up, it took up a great deal 
of space. They had to clear away most of the apparatus in the laboratory and 
store it in one of the upper rooms of the tower. Brewster had been too carried 
away with his enthusiasm for the project to notice Mick's disappointment at 
losing his laboratory, and Mick hadn't said anything about it. But Shannon, who 
had dropped in from the Roost to observe what Doc was up to with her brigands 
now, saw how Mick was feeling and drew him aside while they were preparing to 
initiate the process.
"It seems that you have lost your laboratory," she said, drawing him aside.
"Aye, well, I never had much luck with my alchemical experiments, anyway," said 
Mick, in an attempt to downplay his disappointment.
"Just the same, you have given up more for Doc than any of us," she continued. 
"You have given him the use of your keep, you have labored for him ceaselessly, 
and now you have given up your laboratory. And to what end? What profit have you 
seen from all of this?"
Mick glanced at her sharply. "Speak plainly, Shannon," he replied. "Is it that 
you believe we are all wasting our time and effort? You think Doc is taking 
unfair advantage of us?"
"I am beginning to wonder," Shannon said. "True, he has worked some mighty 
sorcery, but what gain have we received from any of it?"
"You may answer that question for yourself," said Mick. "You enjoy my brew as 
much as any of the brigands, and Doc's still has vastly improved not only its 
quality, but it has enabled me to increase my yield. How often have I heard you 
complaining that your brigands do not bathe enough? Well, Doc's magic soap not 
only keeps them clean, but they enjoy it so much that they bathe more often now. 
Some of them even do it every day. We shall soon be bringing the many-bladed 
knives to market, and in learning how to make them, I have learned to craft 
blades that will be superior to any I have ever seen. When I apply this newfound 
knowledge to the swords I make, you and your brigands will be better armed than 
any force in the twenty-seven kingdoms. Doc's presence here has been a boon to 
all of us, yet 'tis not something that you choose to see. Truth to tell, 'tis 
the jingling of stolen purses that you miss, and 'tis jealous you are over the 
respect and loyalty that Doc commands. 'Twas you, yourself, who agreed to let 
the brigands assist Doc in his works," Mick pointed out.
"Aye, that I did," she replied in a sullen tone, "but only because he promised 
me far greater profits. Thus far, I have seen much work, but precious little 
profit. I have too few men to watch the trails now, and there is no telling how 
many opportunities for plunder have been missed as a result."
"You are a greedy woman, Shannon," Mick said, "and what is worse, you have no 
patience. And I, myself, have none to listen to such talk. There is much work 
left to be done. If you wish to see these profits you are so impatient for, then 
I suggest you let me alone to do it."
And with that, he turned and walked away. Shannon's hands clenched into fists 
and her lips compressed into a tight grimace. Had anyone else dared to speak to 
her that way, she would have given them a taste of steel, but Mick wasn't just 
anyone. He was more than armorer to the brigands, he was her friend, as well, 
and what he'd said struck home that much harder as a result. She turned on her 
heel and stalked off to where her black stallion waited obediently. She swung up 
into the saddle, put her heels to Big Nasty's flanks, and galloped off furiously 
down the trail leading through the forest.
At this point, the narrator will exercise his prerogative to control the flow of 
space and time by going back to London to check up on the other woman in 
Brewster's life, the lovely Pamela Fairburn. Poor Pamela hasn't had a very easy 
time of it. With a body that would leave even construction workers speechless, a 
face that could have easily graced the cover of any fashion magazine, a 
personality that could make even the most misanthropic individuals feel 
comfortable in her presence, and a level of intelligence that made her one of 
the top cybernetics engineers in Europe, you'd think that Pamela would have it 
made. She had everything... everything, that is, except the man she loved.
None of her friends, her colleagues, or her family could understand what the 
hell was wrong with Brewster. Nor could they understand what Pamela saw in him. 
To their way of thinking, any man in his right mind, faced with the prospect of 
marriage to a woman like Pamela Fairburn, would set land-speed records in racing 
to the altar. However, Marvin Brewster hadn't made it there at all. He had 
missed not one, not two, but three scheduled weddings, and now he'd disappeared 
again. Her family was absolutely furious and her father had stopped speaking to 
her. But in spite of everything, Pamela still remained loyal and faithful to 
Brewster.
She understood not just because she loved him, but because she knew the type of 
man he was. A most uncommon type, a genius, and Pamela understood that for 
genius, one often had to make allowances. Most geniuses possessed erratic 
personalities, and in the circles Pamela Fairburn moved in, she had met her 
share of geniuses. However, while there were those whose personalities made it 
difficult to make allowances, Brewster wasn't of that sort at all.
He was more like a small boy who'd promised his mother he would be home before 
dark, but became so caught up in his play that he lost all track of time. He had 
a sweet, endearing quality that made it possible to forgive him almost anything, 
and in his case, there really wasn't all that much to forgive. He was not 
abusive, he didn't drink to excess, and he did not use any drugs. He was not 
threatened by her assertiveness nor intimidated by her intelligence. He did not 
smoke cigarettes and only smoked a pipe occasionally. He did not have loutish 
friends who kept him out carousing until dawn. He didn't play around and he 
couldn't care less about sports. His one flaw was a tendency to become so caught 
up in his work that he simply forgot everything else.
The last time Pamela had seen him, he had apparently solved whatever scientific 
puzzle he had been obsessed with and gone running out the door of their 
apartment, heading for his lab. Pamela had not known what he was working on, but 
that was not unusual. Brewster would often discuss some of his work with her, 
because she was one of the few people who were capable of understanding it, but 
he could be secretive when it came to certain, special projects. Again, like a 
small boy who would hide a present he was making for his mother until he had it 
finished and could spring it full-blown as a surprise.
She had fully expected him to be occupied in the lab until the wee, small hours 
of the morning, but when daylight came and he still hadn't returned, she was not 
really surprised. She had the weekend off, and she had waited up for him most of 
the night, so she decided to get some sleep, expecting him to wake her as soon 
as he came home, all brimming with enthusiasm for whatever breakthrough he had 
made. Yet, when she awoke late Saturday afternoon to find that he still hadn't 
returned, she began to wonder if he hadn't taken off again, in search of some 
essential part for some kind of electronic circuit or something, which was how 
he'd wound up missing for two days the last time they'd scheduled the wedding. 
She called his laboratory, but there was no answer. That, too, did not really 
surprise her. She'd known him to become so caught up in his work that he would 
ignore the ringing phone, sometimes even unplug it. With a sigh, she hung up the 
phone and waited patiently. So much for their plans of taking a weekend drive in 
the country.
Sunday came, and still no Brewster. Pamela's irritation turned into 
apprehension. She kept telling herself that this wasn't anything unusual. He's 
done this sort of thing before, she thought. He'd probably lost all track of 
time. Again. He could become so driven that he would often forget to eat or 
sleep. He needed taking care of more than any man she'd ever met, but she did 
not wish to seem overbearing. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that 
something had gone wrong. By Monday morning, she was convinced of it. She got 
into her car and drove to the EnGulfCo building.
The director of security checked the logs and learned that Brewster had gone up 
to the lab on Friday night and he had never left. "No one can enter or leave the 
security areas without logging in and out," he said. "It's standard procedure. 
However, Dr. Brewster's been known to stay in his lab for days. He's got all the 
comforts up there. He's probably just busy working on one of his special 
projects. I'm sure there's no reason to be concerned."
"Something's wrong, I tell you," Pamela said. "I can feel it! What if there's 
been some sort of accident? I need to get up there."
"I'm afraid I don't have the authority to allow that, Dr. Fairburn."
"Then call Dr. Davies and tell him that I wish to speak with him."
The director of security called the executive secretary of the EnGulfCo 
vice-president in charge of research and development, who put him through to the 
vice-president of R and D himself. Dr. Davies asked that Pamela be brought up to 
his office, where she went through more or less the same conversation again. She 
was rapidly losing her patience.
"I'm his fiancee, not some industrial spy! For God's sake, Walter, you know me! 
I work for the government and I've got top-level clearance! What does it take to 
get permission to go up in a lousy lift?"
"Rather a great deal, I'm afraid," said Davies. "The lift won't even take us up 
there. It's equipped with a sophisticated scanner. He designed it himself, so 
he's the only one who could gain access to the penthouse floor. Even I couldn't 
get up there. And the door to the lab is double-thick steel, like a vault, and 
scanner-equipped, as well. He's the only one who can get in or out."
"That's absurd," said Pamela. "What happens if there's a fire, or some sort of 
accident?"
"Yes, well, we brought up the same objections, but he was quite adamant." Davies 
shrugged. "You know how stubborn he can be. And given his value to the 
corporation, well, he gets pretty much anything he wants."
"Can't we simply go up to the floor below the penthouse and take the stairs?" 
asked Pamela.
"Well, that's a security area, too," said Davies. "We could get up there, but in 
order to get through that way, we'd have to pass through another steel door 
equipped with a palm scanner."
Pamela shook her head with exasperation. "Like a little boy with his bloody 
secret clubhouse. Well, we shall simply have to break in."
"Do you have any idea what that would involve? Besides, I don't really have the 
authority to make such a decision," Davies said.
"Well, who does have the authority? Never mind. Let me use your phone."
"Be my guest."
She placed a call to the CEO of EnGulfCo International. She explained the 
situation to him briefly, then handed the phone to Davies, who said, "Yes, sir" 
a lot, then hung up and looked at her with a sheepish expression.
"You know, I've worked here for ten years. I'm a vice-president and I have to 
make an appointment just to call him. I had no idea you two knew each other."
"We don't, really," Pamela said contritely. "He plays golf with my father. Look, 
I'm sorry, Walter, but I just know that something's happened. I can't tell you 
how I know, I just do."
"Well, I hope you're wrong," said Davies, "but I've been directed to give you my 
full cooperation. However, it's going to be a major project breaking through 
those doors."
"We may not need to do that," she said. "Let me have a look at that scanner 
system."
About an hour later, Pamela had figured out the scanner system and bypassed it. 
Davies and the engineer who'd brought the tools she'd asked for stared at her 
with astonishment.
"Damn, I knew you were good, Pamela," said Davies, "but I think you've missed 
your calling. I know some foreign governments who would pay a fortune for your 
skills."
"Well, it helps that I know how Marvin's mind works," she replied. "He's 
camouflaged the circuitry to appear much more complicated than it really is. And 
there's no way to get through it without setting off alarms at least a dozen 
different ways. Which you were kind enough to turn off. Don't worry about your 
security, Walter, I'd never have gotten this far without your help."
She opened the door and they went up the stairway to the penthouse. There was no 
response when they buzzed the door to the lab, and it took more time to defeat 
the scanner that controlled it, because it was wired differently. Pamela cursed 
and swore and finally got it open. They went through into the lab and, needless 
to say, there was no sign of Brewster.
"I can't understand it," Davies said, looking around the lab, completely 
baffled. He had checked the bathroom and the supply closets, and he was at a 
total loss to account for Brewster's absence. "He has to be here! How could he 
possibly have gotten out?"
It was a locked-room mystery. There was only one way in or out of the lab, and 
that door had been locked until they had opened it. There was no other way 
anyone could have entered or left. The lab was located on the penthouse floor, 
so going out a window would have been out of the question. Aside from which, the 
windows didn't open. The ductwork was not big enough for a grown man to fit 
through, and there was no sign that the grills covering the ductwork had been 
tampered with. There was simply no other way in or out.
"Look at all this broken glass," Pamela said. "It hasn't been thrown or dropped, 
it's simply shattered. If there had been some sort of an explosion, it should 
have caused a great deal more damage. And the windows aren't even broken."
"Thick shatterproof glass," said Davies. He sniffed the air. "No lingering 
odors, but then I suppose the air recirculation system would have taken care of 
that."
Pamela bit her lower lip. "He's pulled disappearing acts before, but never 
anything like this."
She made a quick inventory of the lab and determined that, with the exception of 
the broken glassware, nothing appeared to be out of place. Brewster may have 
been abysmally distracted and absent-minded in his personal life, but his 
laboratory was a model of neatness and organization, and it didn't take her long 
to figure out that everything appeared to be more or less where it was supposed 
to be. It certainly did not look as if the laboratory had been ransacked by 
anyone. That left her with the puzzle of the broken glassware. It had simply 
shattered, which suggested some sort of sonic disturbance. But there was no clue 
as to what might have caused such a phenomenon.
"What's this forklift doing here?" she asked, puzzled.
Davies frowned. "I have no idea. I didn't even know he had a forklift up here. I 
certainly don't recall any requisitions for it. I suppose he must have brought 
it in himself. It's small enough, it would have been a simple matter for him to 
drive it into the lift."
"But I don't see anything heavy enough to require a forklift," she said, looking 
around.
"I wonder what the devil he's been up to this time?" Davies said.
Pamela's next step was to look for Brewster's notes. She and Davies checked 
through his desk and bookshelves and computer files and finally found them in a 
filing cabinet, under "N."
"Why 'N'?" said Davies, puzzled.
"For 'Notes,' of course. Only Marvin would have filed them that way."
There were quite a few folders filed under "N" for "Notes," so they started with 
the last one, which yielded several slim, cardboard-bound, black composition 
books filled with Brewster's meticulous, cramped and nearly illegible scrawl. 
They made a pot of coffee and some sandwiches, then sat down at Brewster's desk 
and got to work. Hours later, when they found what they were looking for, 
neither of them could believe it. It was not until they read the notes of the 
preliminary experiments that they became convinced. Their next step was to 
convince the EnGulfCo CEO.
"He's built a what!" he said over the speakerphone in Brewster's lab.
"A time machine," said Davies, wincing.
"That's absurd," said the CEO. "It's more than absurd, it's impossible. What is 
this, Davies, some sort of joke? Are you drunk?"
"No, sir. I rather wish I was."
"It's all right here in his notes," said Pamela. "You can come and see for 
yourself. He's been obsessed with something for the past few months, some sort 
of secret project that was occupying all his time and attention, even to the 
point of missing three scheduled weddings."
"Yes, yes, I'd heard all about that from your father," said the CEO. "But... a 
time machine, Pamela? I mean, really...."
"I never knew what it was," she replied. "He wouldn't tell me. But last Friday, 
he made some sort of breakthrough that had him tremendously excited. He ran out 
right in the middle of Frankenstein."
"In the middle of what!"
"Frankenstein," said Pamela. "It was on television. It was his favorite film."
"Frankenstein?' said the CEO. "What the devil's that got to do with anything?"
"It was a very special film to Marvin," Pamela replied. "He'd first seen it when 
he was a child and it was what set him on the path to becoming a scientist. The 
point is, he had it on cassette, but he still wouldn't miss a showing of it on 
the telly, and he never would have run out in the middle if it wasn't something 
terribly important. I think he finally made his breakthrough and he rushed right 
off to test it."
"Now, wait just a moment," said the CEO, "let me get this straight. Are you 
seriously suggesting that he'd constructed a time machine up there in his lab, 
right out of H.G. Wells, and took off somewhere in it?"
"It appears so, sir," Davies replied.
"That's utterly ridiculous!"
"Is it?" said Pamela. "Very well, then. You explain how he was logged entering 
the building, and going up to his lab, then never seen to come back out again, 
despite there being guards on duty and video monitors in all the corridors and 
the lift. The door to the lab was still locked from the inside, and most of the 
glassware in the lab had been shattered by what must have been a sonic boom. He 
had also been working with a quantity of Buckyballs, which EnGulfCo had obtained 
for him somehow, at what had to be quite considerable expense."
"Buckyballs?" said the CEO. "What the devil are Buckyballs?"
"Buckminsterfullerine," said Davies. "It's a carbon compound named after 
Buckminster Fuller, because it's shaped rather like the geodesic dome that he 
designed. It also resembles a soccer ball, so it's called 'Buckyball,' for 
short. It's very stable and quite slippery, so it's frictionless, and it's 
normally produced by sono-chemistry. However, all we are able to produce is 
FeC6o, but Marvin was using FeC3o, which is so rare it only forms in supernovas. 
His requisitions normally go through my department, but I knew nothing of this. 
I can't imagine where in God's name he could have found it."
"Oh," said the CEO. "It seems I remember something about that now."
"It seems you remember?" Pamela said. "How in bloody hell could you forget?"
"Well, I don't really understand all this scientific mumbo jumbo," said the CEO. 
"All I recall is that Brewster picked up something about a meteor strike on some 
tiny, Pacific island no one had ever heard of, and there was apparently some 
compound in that meteor he needed for his work. He came to me about it, all very 
mysterious and hush-hush. Well, you know, I decided if he needed it that badly, 
he was probably on the track of something that was liable to be profitable, and 
since he's never let us down before, we negotiated for the purchase of it. There 
was also something involving offshore drilling rights, as I recall, sort of a 
hedge on our investment, as it were. Anyway, I don't quite see your point. What 
is the significance of all this?"
"The significance of it is that he used the Buckyballs to construct a time 
machine," said Pamela, "and it certainly appears as if it's worked. He's gone 
off somewhere, Lord only knows where."
"Or, more to the point, when," said Davies. "Not only is there no way of telling 
where he might have gone, but there's no way to replicate the process. Not 
unless we can manage to get our hands on another fragment of a star that's gone 
supernova."
"You're saying there's no more of that stuff lying around the lab?" asked the 
CEO.
"Hardly," Pamela replied dryly. "It's not the sort of stuff one generally finds 
'lying around,' as you put it."
"So what you're telling me is that this.. .'hell, I can hardly believe I'm even 
saying it...this time machine Brewster constructed is the only one of its kind, 
and cannot be reproduced?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Pamela replied. "We have no way of knowing 
where he went, and we'd have no way of going after him, even if we knew."
"Good God," said the CEO. He was silent for a moment. "Look, Pamela, don't tell 
anyone about this. Not a soul, you understand? Davies, I'm holding you 
responsible. I'm going to need a little time in order to take all of this in. If 
what you're telling me, incredible as it may sound, is really true, then it's 
the scientific discovery of the century. Perhaps even of all time. The 
implications are absolutely mind-boggling. I shudder to think what the media 
would make of all this if they knew."
"It's not the bloody media I'm concerned about," said Pamela, "it's Marvin! God 
only knows what may have happened to him!"
"Steady on, now," said the CEO. "We still don't know for a fact what's really 
happened, but if it's what you think, then getting frantic won't do any good at 
all. First things first. Are you all right? I mean, are you able to handle this, 
emotionally?"
Pamela took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm handling it about as well 
as anyone in my position could be expected to handle it, I suppose. I'm 
absolutely flabbergasted, and I'm frightened, but I'm not in a state of shock, 
if that's what you mean. I'm in control."
"Good for you," said the CEO. "I'm placing the two of you in charge of 
Brewster's laboratory for the duration, and I'll direct security to make sure 
you're the only ones to have access to it. If you need anything, anything at 
all, don't hesitate to let me know personally. In the meantime, I'm going to 
have to give some thought to what we're going to do about this... if, indeed, 
there is anything that we can do, except wait to see what happens. But I don't 
want a whisper of this leaking out. I think Brewster would want it that way, 
too."
"Yes, I'm sure he would," said Pamela. "But I'm worried sick about him. What if 
something went wrong? What if he's...." Her voice trailed off and she felt a 
lump in her throat.
"Let's not talk about that now," the CEO said. "For the moment, it appears that 
all we can do is wait and see."
"Yes, but for how long?" asked Pamela.
"As long as it takes," the CEO replied. "In the meantime, go through all his 
notes and try to find out as much as you possibly can. Whatever happens, Pamela, 
don't worry. We'll see this through together. EnGulfCo will be behind you every 
step of the way, I promise you."
Pamela hung up the phone, feeling some small measure of relief. At least she 
wouldn't be alone through this thing. The entire resources of EnGulfCo 
International would be behind her, and those resources were considerable. If 
there was anything that could be done, they'd find a way to do it. It didn't 
completely ease her worries, but at least it was something.
"Oh, Marvin," she said. "What have you done this time?"
"He's made Einstein look like a bloody bush-leaguer, that's what he's done," 
said Davies. "I can still hardly believe it. It's incredible. I wonder where 
he's gone."
"I don't care," said Pamela, "so long as he gets back safely. And when he does, 
I swear, I'll kill him!"
Meanwhile, the EnGulfCo CEO made another call as soon as he got off the phone 
with Pamela. When he reached the party he was calling, he gave strict 
instructions that Dr. Pamela Fairburn and Dr. Walter Davies were to be shadowed 
around-the-clock, that all contacts they made with anyone were to be reported to 
him immediately, that their homes were to be discreetly searched and their phone 
lines tapped.
He then made another call to the home of a certain official in the Ministry of 
Defense, who owed a great deal of his comfortable lifestyle to EnGulfCo. He told 
him to find out everything there was to know about Buckyballs, and to keep it 
quiet.
"If this stuff is only found in meteors," the CEO said, "I want to know about 
every meteor that's hit the planet since Day One. And if there's any more of it 
left anywhere in the world, find it. Money is no object. EnGulfCo is going to 
corner the market on Buckyballs."
 
CHAPTER SIX
 
It took a while to get the process straightened out, and make sure that 
everything went properly, but after everything was set up, Brewster set about 
whipping up his first batch of aluminum. It was a primitive way of doing it, but 
nonetheless effective, and there were enough laborious steps in the process to 
suitably impress everyone involved with the sorcerous significance of it all.
Brewster knew he'd need to work out some of the bugs and figure out a way to do 
it more efficiently. For example, he'd have to work out some way to grind up the 
bauxite and the limestone that would be quicker than doing it manually, and he'd 
need to have finer cloth made up to use for filters, to catch more of the 
impurities. The release valve on the blow-off tank needed to be redesigned and 
he'd have to have Mick make another one, and probably a couple of spares, as 
well. But one of the biggest problems had been solved, and very neatly, purely 
by accident.
Brewster had been concerned about how to run the portable generator he'd 
salvaged from the time machine. Refining his own fuel could pose a problem, and 
he'd considered adapting it so that it could be run by water power, by a series 
of belts and reduction gears connected to the water-wheel shaft. Eventually, a 
setup like that could possibly provide electrical power for the keep, but 
working it out would be a time-consuming process. Fortunately, he was saved that 
trouble for the present by the fortuitous discovery that an alternate fuel was, 
indeed, available to power his portable generator.
While they were setting up all the equipment to make the first batch of 
aluminum, it had been necessary to clear out some of the kegs of peregrine wine 
that Mick had stored, in order to make more room. This was the new and improved, 
more potent brew that had been produced with the aid of the new still, and just 
how potent it really was they had discovered when Fuzzy Tom and Fifer Bob 
decided to take a short break to sample the contents of one of the kegs they had 
been moving.
So as not to be interrupted while they partook of their refreshment, they 
carried the keg outside, where Pikestaff Pat and Lonesome John were tending the 
fire beneath the rendering pot for the soap. They invited Pat and John to join 
them for a short libation, and they tapped the keg. As they did so, some of the 
brew inside spilled onto the ground, beside the fire. A stray spark happened to 
shoot out of the fire and ignite it, and the resulting explosion blew all four 
of them right out of their boots.
Brewster heard the explosion, followed by the sound of screaming, and rushed 
outside with Mick and Bloody Bob and several of the others in time to see Fuzzy 
Tom sitting on the ground, batting wildly at his flaming beard, while Fifer Bob 
ran around in circles, screaming, his clothing in flames. Pikestaff Pat lay 
unconscious on the ground, some distance away, smoke rising from his prostrate 
form, and Lonesome John was crawling about, stunned and blackened, looking as if 
he'd been struck by lightning. They managed to wrestle Fifer Bob down to the 
ground and get the flames put out, and with the exception of some minor burns 
and scrapes among them and the loss of a considerable amount of facial hair on 
Fuzzy Tom's part, there were fortunately no serious injuries. However, the 
combustible nature of the new, improved peregrine wine had been quite amply 
demonstrated and Brewster found that by diluting it somewhat, it made a 
perfectly acceptable fuel to power his generator.
"Hmmm," Brewster mused as he started up his generator with the new fuel for the 
first time. "Interesting. Runs like a top. I wonder...."
"What are you wondering about, Doc?" Mick asked.
"Mmmm? Oh, I was just thinking," Brewster replied absently. "Amazing stuff, 
this. I can't believe you people actually drink it."
"Warms you up right and proper, it does," said Mick with a grin.
"I'll bet," said Brewster. "I shudder to think what it does to your liver. I was 
just thinking that this could have an application to a crude sort of internal 
combustion engine. We could probably sand-cast the cylinders, and there would be 
a lot of hand-finishing work involved, of course, but-"
"An inter-what?" asked Mick.
"Mmmm? Oh, never mind. I'll explain later. It's just another project I might 
have in mind."
"Ah," said Mick, "I see." Of course, he didn't see anything at all, but he 
didn't want to admit it.
"Well," said Brewster, "it looks like we're all set for our first production 
run. Let's see what happens, shall we?"
Everyone who wasn't directly involved gathered around to watch while the 
production team fired up the cookers. From the first step, where the ground-up 
bauxite was mixed with the caustic soda, to the last, where the melted aluminum 
was separated in the reduction pot, took several hours, and by the time the 
process was complete, anticipation had reached a high pitch. No one was sure 
what this aluminum stuff was, and they were all eager to see the final results 
of this latest sorcerous project. When Brewster finally upended the cooled pot 
and the slag from the impurities fell out, followed by about a pound of 
solidified aluminum, they were all too stunned to speak.
Mick drew a sharp intake of breath and glanced at McMurphy. McMurphy glanced at 
Long Bill. Long Bill, his jaw hanging slack, glanced at Froggy Bruce. Froggy 
Brace didn't glance at anybody. He couldn't take his wide-eyed gaze off the 
aluminum, which he recognized instantly, as they all did, as nickallirium, the 
rarest and most precious metal in the land, which only the Master Alchemists of 
SAG knew how to make. They could scarcely believe what they were seeing. Mick 
could barely even breathe. Doc had just shown them the secret of the 
Philosopher's Stone. And, as incredible as it seemed from the way he was acting, 
he didn't seem to realize the true significance of what he had just done.
Brewster mistook their absolutely stunned reaction for a display of 
indifference. "Well," he said, "I realize that it may not look like much now, 
but when you see what we can do with it, you'll realize what-"
His words were interrupted by a tremendous crash as Bloody Bob's eyes rolled up 
behind his visor and, overwhelmed by the implications of it all, he fainted dead 
away.
"Bob!" said Brewster, bending over him. "Good Lord. Bob, are you all right? What 
happened?"
"Uh... must be the heat," said Mick, with a sidelong glance at the others.
"Aye, that's what done it," said McMurphy, catching his glance. " 'Twas the 
heat."
"Aye, the heat," echoed the others.
"Bit warm in here."
"Stuffy."
"Aye, stuffy."
"Aluminum, you call it?" Mick said, clearing his throat.
"Yes," said Brewster, slapping Bob lightly on the cheeks in an effort to revive 
the big old brigand. "It's a soft metal, very easy to work, and it doesn't rust. 
It should make some really nice handles for the knives. Polished up, it'll look 
very attractive, too. I should think it would really make them sell."
"Oh, aye.... I should think so," said Mick, clearing his throat again. He 
glanced at the others significantly and gave a slight shake of his head. They 
merely nodded, wide-eyed.
"Here, somebody give me a hand," said Brewster. "We'll take him out to get some 
fresh air."
As Long Bill and McMurphy helped him carry Bloody Bob outside, Mick turned to 
the others and said, "Not a word about this, you hear?"
"Nickallirium," breathed Silent Fred, so shocked that he actually spoke a 
complete sentence. "We've just made nickallirium!"
"And Doc doesn't even seem to know!" said Froggy Bruce. "Can it be possible he 
doesn't truly realize what he's done?"
"Boys," said Mick, grinning as he folded his arms across his chest, "your 
brigand days are done. No more lurking in the hedgerows, lads. We're all going 
to be rich."
What sort of a name for a town was Brigand's Roost? Harlan the Peddlar had never 
even heard of it before. He had never journeyed this far from Pittsburgh before 
and a part of him was already regretting his decision to embark upon this search 
for some unique commodity that he could sell. He had traveled far from Bonnie 
King Billy's domain to the Kingdom of Frank, the smallest, poorest, and most 
insignificant of the twenty-seven kingdoms, in the hope that somewhere, in this 
pestilential province, he would find some clever craftsman whose labors had as 
yet gone undiscovered. It had been a long, tiresome, unpleasant journey and he 
was tired and dusty from the trip when he pulled his wagon up before the inn 
with the crudely lettered wooden sign hanging outside that said simply, 
"One-Eyed Jack's."
It certainly wasn't much of a town, for all its flamboyant name. The 
shield-shaped wooden sign erected on a pole outside the town had said:
You Are Now Entering The Town Of
BRIGAND'S ROOST
Population Small, But Varied and Vastly Entertaining. Have A Nice Day
The town was nothing but a small cluster of ramshackle, thatch-roofed cottages, 
a few weathered barns, and an assortment of tumbledown chicken coops, with a 
narrow, rutted road winding through it. Chickens were wandering freely on the 
street, if it could even be called a street, and a few ugly, fat, pink-speckled, 
wild spams were rutting with their rodent snouts among the refuse. A skinny dog 
ran by, clutching a dead snake in its jaws.
As Harlan's wagon entered the town, drawn by his tired, plodding cart horse, it 
was encircled by a gaggle of grimy, barefoot, and bedraggled children, who 
shouted at him and pelted him with dirt clods. This was, of course, the Awful 
Urchin Gang, whose awfulness was measured by the fact that no one would admit to 
being their parents, and so they ran wild and unfettered, except occasionally, 
when one or two of them strayed way out of line and were caught and fettered by 
the adults of the town.
"Get the hell away from me, you weaselly, egg-sucking, little bastards!" Harlan 
bellowed at them, which only brought on a rain of dirt clods comparable in its 
fury and intensity to what the Luftwaffe did to London during the Blitz.
Shielding himself with his arms, Harlan reached behind him into the wagon and 
pulled out something he always carried with him on his travels, against the 
possibility of being set upon by thugs and highwaymen. It was a small, 
cork-stoppered, glass vial, of which he had a number in a felt-lined, wooden 
case, specially brewed up for him by a Pittsburgh alchemist named Morey. (His 
magename was actually Morrigan, but he didn't look anything like a Morrigan; he 
looked more like a Morey.) Hand-lettered on the label of the vial, in Morey's 
neat little script, were the words, "Elixir of Stench."
Cursing under the rain of dirt clods, Harlan threw the vial at the feet of the 
Awful Urchin Gang and the glass shattered, releasing what Morey the Alchemist 
called, "A stench most foul." And foul it was, indeed. It smelled worse than a 
dozen demons breaking wind. It smelled worse than a unicorn in heat. It smelled 
worse, even, than roasted spam. It would have stopped a gang of well-armed 
brigands in their tracks and sent them running for the hills, holding their 
noses.
It didn't even faze the Awful Urchin Gang.
In desperation, Harlan whipped up his tired horse, which hardly needed the whip 
after it caught a whiff of the Elixir of Stench, and the beast bolted through 
the town, outracing the Awful Urchin Gang and almost upsetting the wagon as it 
galloped round a bend in the road near the center of the town. Harlan swore and 
pulled back on the reins, bringing it to a halt just outside One-Eyed Jack's 
Tavern.
"Obnoxious, little, scum-sucking troglodytes," he mumbled as he descended from 
the wagon.
"I see you met the Awful Urchin Gang," said a dry, slightly raspy voice from 
above him.
Harlan glanced up and saw Dirty Mary leaning out an open window on the second 
floor of the inn. "Any of those miserable guttersnipes yours?" he inquired.
"If any of them were, I wouldn't admit it," Dirty Mary replied.
"I bloody well don't blame you," said the peddlar.
"None of them are, though," Dirty Mary said. "The last child I had grew up and 
ran off to the war."
"What war?"
"I dunno. There's always some war going on somewhere. Anyway, it was a long time 
ago. I scarcely remember what he looked like. He wasn't worth much, so I can't 
say as I miss him."
The peddlar grinned. "What's your name, fair damsel?"
Dirty Mary sniffed. "Fair damsel, is it? Faith, and I'm old enough to be your 
mother. They call me Dirty Mary if it please you, and even if it doesn't please 
you. 'Tis all the same to me. And you can save your flattery for my fancy girls, 
but 'tis me you'll have to deal with, so 'twon't be getting you a cheaper price. 
And there's no haggling, mind."
Harlan threw back his head and laughed. "Far be it from me to go haggling with 
the likes of you, Mary. But for now, 'tis a meal and a drink or two I'm after, 
and perhaps a bit of conversation."
"Come in, then, and I'll come down and keep you company. Sure, and there's no 
charge for that. 'Tis precious little company I get these days."
"What's to protect my goods from yonder horrid little swine I hear approaching?" 
Harlan asked, hearing the Awful Urchin Gang bellowing as they caught up with 
him.
"You leave that to me," said Dirty Mary, and as the Awful Urchin Gang came 
racing around the bend in the road, she gave a gravel-voiced yell loud enough to 
crack slate. "Eeeeeyow, you urchins!"
They all came screeching to a halt, gazing up at her fearfully.
"You be leaving this good man and his fine wagon alone, or it'll be your ears 
I'll be boxing for you, each and every one of you, you hear? Now off with you, 
and find some other mischief!"
Heads down, they shuffled off, dejectedly, and the peddlar looked at Dirty Mary 
with new respect. "I'm much obliged to you," he said.
"No need for it," said Dirty Mary. "Come on in, then. I'll be seeing you 
downstairs."
Harlan entered the inn and walked up to the bar. With the exception of a few old 
people lounging around in the corners, the place was empty, save for the 
innkeeper behind the bar, One-Eyed Jack himself, who, as it might well be 
surmised, wore a black leather patch over one eye. One empty eye socket, to be 
precise.
He'd lost his eye years earlier, in a tavern brawl, and he had purchased a 
lovely glass one, with a blue iris. It didn't really go with his other eye, 
which was brown, but he liked the effect. Unfortunately, he got drunk and passed 
out one night and someone had stolen it right out of his eye socket. He 
suspected it was one of the brigands, which was a good bet, and had vowed 
revenge, if he could ever figure out which one it was. (In fact, it had been 
Saucy Cheryl, one of Dirty Mary's fancy girls. She'd always had a weakness for 
blue eyes.)
One-Eyed Jack gave Harlan the Peddlar a jaundiced look as he came up to the bar. 
(It wasn't that One-Eyed Jack was unfriendly; he just happened to suffer from 
jaundice and that was the only kind of look he could give.)
"What can I get you, stranger?" One-Eyed Jack asked.
"A tankard of mineral water and lime, and a bowl of your finest stew," said 
Harlan.
"A tankard of what?" said One-Eyed Jack.
"Mineral water and lime," replied the peddlar, with an edge to his voice. He was 
in no mood to be harassed over his choice of libation.
"Never heard of it," said One-Eyed Jack.
"You never heard of it?" said Harlan.
"That's what I said, 'tain't it? What is it?"
"What is it?"
"I just said that, didn't I?" said One-Eyed Jack.
The peddlar rolled his eyes. "Well... what have you got, then?"
"Peregrine wine," said One-Eyed Jack.
"And?"
"And Mulligan stew."
"No, I mean what else have you got to drink?" said Harlan.
"I've got peregrine wine," said One-Eyed Jack, again.
"That's it?"
"Did you hear me say I had anything else?"
"Well, no, but...."
"Then that's what I've got."
"What's Mulligan stew?"
" "Tis a stew Mulligan makes out back," said One-Eyed Jack.
"What's in it?"
"Dunno. Ask Mulligan."
"Well... where is he?"
"Hey, Mulligan!" bellowed One-Eyed Jack.
"What?" shouted Mulligan from back in the kitchen.
"What's in the stew?" yelled One-Eyed Jack.
There was a long pause.
"I forget," yelled Mulligan.
"Wonderful," said Harlan wryly.
"So what'll it be?" asked One-Eyed Jack.
"Some choice," said the peddlar. "A wine I've never heard of and a mystery stew. 
World-class establishment you've got here. Do I dare ask what peregrine wine 
is?"
" 'Tis brewed from the root of the peregrine bush," said One-Eyed Jack. "Good 
for what ails ya."
"So 'tis like a herbal thing?" said Harlan. "What the hell, I'll try it. And 
since I'm feeling adventurous, and also starving, I'll try a bowl of the mystery 
stew. Bring it to that table over there."
He went over to the table he had chosen and a few moments later, Dirty Mary came 
down to join him. She had spruced herself up a bit, as she didn't often get much 
company these days. She had put on a nice dress and she didn't look even 
remotely dirty. No one was sure exactly how she got her name, unless perhaps it 
had something to do with her chosen occupation, and no one knew how old she was. 
She wouldn't tell anyone her age, not even One-Eyed Jack, whose memory wasn't 
what it used to be and who would have forgotten within five minutes of being 
told, anyway. In any case, she was not in the first flower of her youth. Her 
petals had certainly seen better days. She spotted Harlan and came over to join 
him at his table.
"Nice place you've got here," said the peddlar. "Given your wonderful selection, 
I can't imagine why you're not doing better business."
Dirty Mary shrugged. "Well, Mulligan's stew never tastes the same twice," she 
said. "Sometimes it's better than others, sometimes even the wild spams won't 
eat it. But the wine makes up for it."
One-Eyed Jack came over and set down two tankards full of peregrine wine in 
front of Harlan and Mary. The peddlar sniffed it experimentally.
"Smells like medicine," he said wryly. "Where is everybody? Except for those 
awful urchins and those old people over there, the whole town appears deserted. 
Not that there's much of it to begin with."
"Everyone's at Doc's place," said Mary, taking a sip of wine. "Even my fancy 
girls. He's got them working. My fancy girls, working. Hard to imagine, but 
there you have it."
"Who's Doc?" asked Harlan, lifting the tankard, but not yet taking a drink.
" 'Tis a mighty sorcerer, Brewster Doc is," said Mary, taking another gulp of 
brew. "Lives out at the old mill. 'Tis a keep, actually, but there's a mill 
there, and Doc's been working some powerful wonders out there."
"You don't say?" said Harlan. He took a drink. His eyes bulged out and he gasped 
for breath as he made a sound like a leaky bellows.
"I imagine you'll be wanting to see for yourself," said Dirty Mary as the 
peddlar clutched spasmodically at the table. "I'll be heading out that way 
myself before too long. Shouldn't want to miss the feast. There's feasting every 
night at Doc's, after the work is done. We used to have some feasting here, 
every now and then, but lately everybody feasts at Doc's. Jack doesn't mind. 
Says 'tis less cleaning up for him to do. Still, they tell me business will pick 
up once word of Doc's wonders starts to spread."
The peddlar was making gasping, wheezing noises as he tried to breathe. Mary 
simply sat there, sipping her wine, as if it were no more potent than a broth.
"He's made magical dirt remover," she said. "Works like a charm. Used it myself. 
Foams up nice and pleasant. Makes you look like a horse that's lathered up from 
being run too hard, but it dissolves the dirt like magic if you scrub a bit." 
Dirty Mary frowned. "What's that noise outside?"
The sound of a high-pitched, keening wail reached them and started to grow 
louder. Mary got up and went to the door in time to see the Awful Urchin Gang 
come fleeing around the bend in the road, with the three brawling brothers, 
Hugh, Dugh, and Lugh, in hot pursuit on foot, pausing every few steps to pick up 
some fresh dirt clods and hurl them at the urchins. The urchins ran past the 
open door of the tavern and turned a short distance down the road to make a 
stand. Hugh, Dugh, and Lugh were brought to a halt by a fresh fusillade of dirt 
clods from the urchins. They ducked down behind the peddlar's wagon, picked up 
some more dirt clods, and returned the fire. They were all having a splendid 
time.
MacGregor came riding around the bend at a walk, leading the brothers' three 
horses. He watched the battle for a moment or so, shook his head and rolled his 
eyes, then dismounted and tied up the horses.
"A pleasant evening to you," he said to Dirty Mary.
"And to you," Mary replied. She jerked her head toward the three brothers. "That 
lot yours?"
"Aye, sad to say," MacGregor replied as he watched them dart out from behind the 
wagon, launch a broadside of dirt clods at the urchins, then duck behind the 
wagon once again, giggling like schoolboys. "You want I should make them stop?"
"Ah, let them have their fun," said Mary. "It appears the urchins may have met 
their match."
MacGregor frowned. "I wouldn't want the children getting hurt," he said.
"There's more where they came from," Mary replied. She took in his dark, 
handsome appearance, the crossed bandoliers stuck full of knives, and the Guild 
badge on his tunic. "You're an assassin?"
"Aye, lady, that I am," said Mac. "But you need fear nothing from me. I am a 
professional."
"So am I," said Mary. "Come on in and let's talk shop."
MacGregor climbed the three wooden steps up to the tavern entrance and Mary 
stepped aside to let him in. As was his habit, he quickly cased the place as he 
came in. "Things appear to be quiet," he said. His gaze fell on the peddlar, 
choking at his table. "What's wrong with him?"
"Amateur drinker," Mary said simply.
"Really?" said Mac. "I'll try some of whatever he's having."
"Jack! Another tankard!" Mary shouted. "I'm called Dirty Mary."
"Sean MacGregor. They call me Mac the Knife. And those three overgrown boys out 
there are... well, never mind." He came over to the peddlar's table. "Is the 
little fellow going to be all right?" he said.
Mary shrugged and took another sip of wine. " 'Tain't killed anyone yet," she 
said, gazing at her tankard thoughtfully. "Still, there's always a first time."
They sat down together at the table, where Harlan the Peddlar was still trying 
to find his voice. Or catch his breath. Whichever came first. One-Eyed Jack 
brought Mac a tankard of peregrine wine. Mac raised the tankard and took an 
experimental sip. His eyes grew wide and the color drained out of his face.
"S'trewth!" he said, the breath hissing between his teeth as he inhaled sharply. 
He shook his head to clear it. "This stuff'll pickle your innards! What in 
thunder is it?"
"Peregrine wine," said Mary, taking another healthy gulp. MacGregor watched with 
disbelief as it went down her throat without any apparent effect.
"I never even heard of it," said Mac, "which scarcely seems possible. How is it 
made?"
"Distilled from the root of the peregrine bush," said Mary. " Tis Mick 
O'Fallon's own special, secret recipie, made more potent by a magical device 
known as a still."
"Indeed?" said Mac. "And who might this Mick O'Fallon be?"
"He's a leprechaun," said Mary. "An armorer, by trade, and a bit of an amateur 
alchemist. If you want yourself a proper sword, or a fine new knife, then you 
should go see Mick. You won't find a better craftsman."
"Craftsman?" wheezed Harlan, still trying to recover from his first taste of 
peregrine wine. "Did you say... craftsman?"
"Aye, and a right fine craftsman he is, too," Mary replied. "You won't find a 
better blade than Mick O'Fallon's in all the twenty-seven kingdoms."
"Is that so?" said MacGregor. "Well, in that case, I shall have to make a point 
to seeing his work for myself. Where might one find this Mick O'Fallon?"
"He'll be at Doc's place," Mary said. "They're all at Doc's place all the time, 
these days. Much to do. Many wonders to perform."
"Wonders? What sort of wonders?" Mac asked.
At that moment, Hugh, Dugh, and Lugh came bursting into the tavern, grinning 
from ear to ear and pounding each other on the back. "Hey, Mac!" yelled Dugh. 
"We won! We beat their breeches off 'em!"
"Sent 'em howling in retreat, we did!" said Hugh.
"They went for reinforcements!" Lugh said.
"Have some of this wine, lads," said MacGregor with a smile. "Innkeeper! Three 
tankards for my boys!"
Jack set three tankards up on the bar and the three brothers made a beeline for 
them. As one, they lifted the large tankards to their lips and drained them in 
one gulp.
As one, their three heads snapped up and their eyes bulged out of their sockets.
And, as one, they stiffened and started to keel over backwards.
"Timber!" shouted Mac.
With a resounding crash, the three brothers collapsed full length to the floor, 
unconscious.
"Innkeeper, we'll be needing rooms for the night," said Mac.
Shannon galloped down the road leading from the keep to Brigand's Roost, her 
leather quirt slapping at Big Nasty's flanks. But no matter how hard she rode, 
she couldn't seem to outdistance her anger and frustration.
No man had ever got the better of her, and now Doc had somehow managed to 
accomplish that very thing, and without any visible effort, to boot. He had 
virtually all the brigands working at his keep every day, and the few she had 
left to watch the trails kept complaining that the others at the keep were 
having all the fun. They hadn't had a decent robbery in weeks.
She would have fought Doc for the leadership of the brigands, but he had never 
challenged her. Indeed, he kept insisting that she was the leader of the 
brigands, and that he had no interest in that position himself. He never 
questioned her leadership or her authority. And yet, still, the brigands seemed 
to give him more obedience and show him more respect than they did her.
She had tried seducing, him and that had proved a dismal failure. That had been 
a first, as well. Never had a man resisted her successfully. Doc had claimed to 
be betrothed, to some sorceress from his own land named Pamela, but other men 
had forgotten wives and sweethearts when confronted with her charms. Shannon 
thought she must be slipping. Truly, she thought, it had to be magic. What other 
explanation could there be? And how could she fight magic?
As she rode toward Brigand's Roost, she grew angrier and angrier, her 
frustration mounting until she felt ready to burst. She needed to talk to Dirty 
Mary. The older woman was always full of good advice. Yes, she'd talk to Mary. 
Either that, or kill somebody. She reined in her horse outside the tavern and 
strode inside, her boot heels loud on the wood-planked floor.
"Well, hel-lo," said a deep, resonant voice. "Look at what the wind blew in."
MacGregor's style and timing were impeccable, most times. However, this was not 
one of those times. Shannon stopped dead in her tracks and slowly glanced at him 
over her shoulder.
Mac gave her his best grin. Shannon did not return it.
Had Jack or Dirty Mary been there, they might have warned him, but Mary had gone 
up to prepare the rooms for Mac and his companions, and Jack was occupied with 
putting those very companions to bed, as they were quite insensible and needed 
help. There was no one in the place except some of the old people, and when they 
saw the look on Shannon's face, they calmly started to pull their benches back 
against the wall.
"Were you addressing your comment to me!" asked Shannon, with a dangerous edge 
to her voice.
"To none other, my lovely," Mac replied. "Faith, and you're a fine, strapping 
figure of a woman. What are you called, my beauty?"
"I am not your beauty, stranger," she replied, her voice a whip crack, "nor am I 
your lovely. Such talk might turn the heads of brainless serving wenches where 
you come from, but I have no use for it. Nor for the likes of you."
Mac smiled. "My, my," he said, "what sharp claws we have."
"Sharp enough," snapped Shannon, her eyes flashing as her blade sang free of its 
scabbard. "Care to try your luck?"
MacGregor laughed. "So, sharp claws and a spirit to go with them! Nay, put away 
your blade, girl, or do you not perceive the Guild badge on my tunic? I fear 
you're somewhat overmatched this time. Why not join me for a drink, instead?"
"Your Guild badge does not frighten me, assassin," she replied. "Nor do all 
those pretty knives you wear so ostentatiously. 'Tis one thing to wear a weapon 
and 'tis another to know its proper use. Any common footpad can plant a knife in 
someone's back. It takes more courage to meet your opponent face-to-face."
"And so I have met my share," MacGregor said. " 'Tis no mere, common footpad you 
behold, my pretty. My advice to you is to put down your blade. Save it for 
threatening the farm boys hereabouts."
Shannon's eyes were narrow slits. "And my advice to you, assassin, is to draw 
your sword and prove your worth. Or else I'll run you through right where you 
sit."
MacGregor sighed and shook his head as he got to his feet. With an air of 
resignation, he drew his sword and made a wide, sweeping gesture with it and his 
other arm, as he gave her a curt bow. "Well, then, if you insist upon a lesson 
in humility, I am at your service."
He gave her a mocking salute with his blade and, with a condescending little 
smile, he came on guard.
Shannon's blade flashed at him so quickly that it was only his instinct, honed 
to a razor's edge from years of practicing his craft, that saved him. He brought 
his blade up in a parry purely by reflex, never dreaming she'd attack so 
quickly. With equal speed, Shannon flicked her sword around his parry and nicked 
one of the bandoliers on his tunic. And she kept on coming. Startled, MacGregor 
found himself retreating before her furious onslaught. And, with equal 
astonishment, he suddenly realized that she purely meant to kill him.
He recovered from his initial surprise quickly, however, and realized that this 
was no mere girl who paraded with a blade that he was facing, but a skilled and 
lethal antagonist. He became immediately serious and shifted into his 
professional mode. Whoever this young woman was, he realized, she knew what she 
was about. Someone had taught her, and they had taught her well. Well, thought 
MacGregor, he was about to teach her better.
He parried and launched his counterattack. His point flicked past Shannon's 
defense, and she barely caught it on her quillons. Suddenly, she was on the 
retreat.
"You fight well, my pretty," he said with a grin as he pursued his attack. "But, 
alas, not well enough. 'Twill be a shame to kill you."
"Talk won't get it done," Shannon replied with a parry and riposte, followed by 
a feint and a beat against his blade to knock it aside. Her point darted home 
and would have penetrated his shoulder but for being deflected by one of the 
knives in his bandolier. As it was, it scraped against his tunic, cutting it and 
drawing a little blood.
"Damn," said MacGregor. "That was my best tunic, blast you."
"Then 'tis only fitting you be buried in it," Shannon replied as she pressed 
home her attack.
The clanging of their blades rang out like a steel-drum tattoo as they moved 
back and forth across the floor, knocking into benches and tables, recovering, 
and ducking aside from deadly thrusts. Shannon hooked a bench with her foot and 
sent it crashing against MacGregor's shins. He nearly tripped, recovered, and 
parried her thrust just in the nick of time. He reached out with his free hand, 
grabbed a tankard of wine off a table, and dashed its contents into her face. As 
Shannon recoiled, bringing her arm up to her face, he hooked her blade and sent 
it flying across the room.
"Now then, my pretty," he said, "since you've been declawed, I think 'tis time 
I-"
However, he never finished, because Shannon spun around, snatched up a bench, 
and swung it at him. It struck him in the shoulder and he tumbled to the ground, 
momentarily stunned, giving her the time to leap up on a table and vault it, 
running across the room to retrieve her sword. As she picked it up, Mac came on 
guard with a determined expression on his face. With his free hand, he drew one 
of his long knives so that he could fight Florentine style, dagger in one hand, 
sword in the other.
"You're good, my love," he said. "A shameful waste of talent in this backwater. 
But I grow weary of this dance and 'tis time for it to end."
"You fight well, yourself, assassin," she replied. "You are skilled, and without 
scruples. 'Tis a pity you grow weary, for I am but beginning to enjoy myself." 
And she drew her own dagger.
Dirty Mary and One-Eyed Jack had come down, alerted by the noise.
"Shannon," said One-Eyed Jack wryly. "I might have known. I'd better stop it."
"Why?" asked Dirty Mary.
"Well, if she kills him, who'll pay the bill?" asked One-Eyed Jack.
"He seems to be holding his own," Mary observed. "Besides, you're getting old, 
Jack. I wouldn't be getting between them, if I were you."
"They'll wreck the place," said Jack.
Mary shrugged. "So? It's been wrecked before. At least once a week, and 
sometimes twice on Saturday."
"Be one hell of a mess," said Jack. "I'm tired of cleaning up after these sorts 
of things."
"Oh, stop your complaining," Mary said. " 'Tis a fine and proper fight. Settle 
back and enjoy it."
The old folks at the back of the room made room for them on the benches and 
eagerly beckoned Jack, and Mary to join them.
Shannon and MacGregor advanced and met in the center of the room. Shannon aimed 
a feint at MacGregor's chest, then slashed in with a quick cut at his head. He 
brought up his blade in time to parry it and darted in with his dagger. She 
blocked the thrust with her own short blade and launched a devastating kick at 
his groin. It was only by twisting aside at the last second that Mac avoided it. 
He took it on his hip and then pushed hard against her as their blades were 
locked, sending her stumbling backward. Shannon recovered quickly and as he 
lunged, she parried, then pivoted sharply around and caught him in the temple 
with a spinning high kick.
The old folks at the back appreciatively applauded the unorthodox technique.
MacGregor went down and Shannon lunged in for the kill, but he brought his blade 
up at the last moment and deflected her thrust, so that her point went into the 
floor, then lashed out hard with his foot and knocked her off her feet.
Shannon retained her grip on her sword, however, and they both came up ready for 
more, bent over slightly, circling, looking for an opening. Both of them were 
grinning.
"You're the best I've ever seen," MacGregor said with admiration. "Where the 
devil did you learn to fight like that?"
"Fending off admiring louts such as yourself," Shannon replied. "But you're not 
so bad yourself, assassin."
"Not so bad?" MacGregor said with a smirk. "Faith, love, I'm the best there is."
"Then prove it," Shannon said, lunging at him.
Their blades clashed, their daggers darted in, looking for openings, but each 
countered the other. As Shannon blocked his dagger thrust, MacGregor quickly 
brought his elbow up and smashed her in the jaw. Blood spurted from her lip as 
she recoiled from the blow.
"Well struck," she said, recovering more quickly than he had anticipated and 
aiming a cut at his face. Her blade struck home and opened up a gash along his 
cheek.
"Blast you!" said MacGregor. "That'll leave a scar!"
"On you, 'twill look quite dashing," she replied as she parried his attack.
He feinted, followed up with another quick feint, and beat her blade aside. She 
recovered, but not quite quickly enough. Her right arm was left exposed and 
MacGregor's blade slid past her own and up along her forearm, ripping through 
her flesh.
"That hurt, you bastard!" she snarled, batting his blade aside with her dagger 
and launching a kick at his essentials. It struck home and Mac grunted as he 
doubled over, but still managed to bring his blade up in time to block her 
thrust.
She moved in quickly, her blade locked against his, and as he stabbed out with 
his dagger, she caught it with her own and kept right on coming, pushing him 
down onto the floor. They both fell, Shannon on top of him, and she used her 
knee to pin his knife hand as she held his sword down with her blade. With a 
bloody grin, she held her knife blade across his throat.
"Damn, but you're good!" she said, and leaned down and kissed him full on the 
mouth. It was a hard, passionate kiss, and when she broke it, she looked down at 
him, his mouth smeared with her blood, his eyes wide with surprise, and she 
smiled as she pressed her blade against his throat. "Yield, assassin," she 
demanded.
"Fuck you," he said.
"In due time," she replied, "but first you yield to me, and grant you've met 
your better." She pressed the blade against his throat.
"Damn you to hell," MacGregor said. "I yield."
The audience at the back broke into spontaneous applause.
"She didn't kill him," One-Eyed Jack said with surprise.
"I think she likes him," Dirty Mary replied.
"What happens now?" asked One-Eyed Jack.
Mary gave him a sidelong glance. "You are getting old," she said.
Shannon let Mac up. She stood and sheathed her blades. Mac sat up slowly, 
rubbing his throat, still aching from the kick to his privates. He squirmed 
uncomfortably.
"Damn," he said. "You just about unmanned me."
Shannon smiled. "I hope not," she replied.
MacGregor grinned. "S'trewth, and 'tis the first time in my life I've ever met 
my match," he said.
"More than your match," said Shannon with a chuckle.
"Very well, then," admitted Mac sourly. "More than my match. Satisfied?"
"Not yet," Shannon-replied with a twinkle in her eye. "But we'll work on it."
"You handle a sword like a demon from Hell. Who the devil are you?" asked 
MacGregor.
"I am called Black Shannon."
MacGregor stared at her, "You! Faith, and I've heard of you! There's a king's 
ransom on your head!"
"Were you thinking of trying to collect on it?" she inquired, resting her hand 
on the pommel of her sword.
Mac held up his hand. "Nay, lass, not I. 'Tis enough damage I've taken for one 
day." He rubbed his shoulder and, as he brought his hand up, it contacted his 
Guild badge.
He stared down at it thoughtfully, then unpinned it from his tunic. "You'll be 
honoring me if you would wear this," he said. "You've beaten the best, and that 
makes you the best now. And if there be any who doubt it, they'll have to deal 
with Scan MacGregor."
"MacGregor the Bladesman?" Shannon said. "You're the one they call Mac the 
Knife?"
"Aye, lass, that's me."
Shannon threw back her head and laughed.
"What's so funny?" Mac asked.
"S'trewth, and 'twas your own father who taught me!" she replied.
MacGregor's eyes grew wide. "Well, I'll be.... Faith, and I could have sworn I'd 
encountered that style before! How did you come to know my father?"
"You do not remember? He caught me trying to lift his purse and when I tried to 
stab him, he disarmed me and said that if I wished to be an alleyman, I'd best 
learn how to do it properly."
MacGregor's jaw dropped. "You! You mean to tell me that you were that scrawny, 
dirty, little ragamuffin he brought home with him?"
"Aye," she said, "and you were too good to speak with me. And but a few days 
later, you left home to embark upon your own career. I swore that one day I'd 
meet up with you again and take you down a peg or two."
"And so you have," MacGregor said. He came up to her and pinned his Guild badge 
on her tunic. "You've done my father proud. And my much belated apologies for 
being too full of myself as a young lad and not paying attention to you. Rest 
assured, it shall not happen again."
She smiled. "I'll wager that it won't," she said, and kissed him.
The old folks watching them smiled and went, "Awww...."
"Jack!" said Shannon. "Drinks all around!"
"Who's paying?" Jack asked.
"Loser pays," said Shannon.
"Are you so sure I've lost?" asked Mac.
"Perhaps not," she replied with a smile. "But we shall see."
 
CHAPTER SEVEN
 
"I wonder what he's doing with all those people?" Queen Sandy frowned as she 
mused aloud and brushed her long, flaxen hair.
Bonnie King Billy merely grunted as he sat on the edge of the royal bed in their 
royal bedchamber, counting the signatures on the latest petition received by his 
royal self.
"I understand that none of them are ever seen again," Queen Sandy said as the 
brush glided through her extremely fine blonde hair. She cocked her head to one 
side as she stared at herself in the mirror. "You don't suppose he kills them, 
do you?"
"Four thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine," King Billy said, frowning with 
annoyance. "That's almost a thousand more signatures than the last bloody 
petition! Eight hundred and seventy-three more signatures, to be exact."
"William, you're not listening to me," Queen Sandy said with an annoyed grimace.
"Eh? What's that, my dearest?"
"I said, you're not listening to me."
"Oh. Sorry, dearest. I was distracted by this latest petition," he replied. 
"They're getting worse and worse, you know. More signatures each time. 'Tis a 
conspiracy, if you ask me. Who are all these people, anyway?"
"Your subjects, my love."
"I know that," King Billy replied irritably, "but who are they? I mean, I have 
absolutely no idea, you know." He held up the petition scroll and shook it. It 
unrolled across the floor. "All I see here is a bloody list of names, names that 
mean nothing to me, absolutely nothing. I have no idea who these people are. No 
idea whatsoever. How do I know they even exist? How do I know someone didn't 
simply sit down and make all of these names up?"
"Each of the signatures is different," Queen Sandy pointed out.
"Well... so what?" King Billy replied petulantly. "Anyone can alter their 
handwriting, can't they?"
"Four thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine different ways?" Queen Sandy asked.
"Well... it could be the work of some gifted forger," said King Billy. "Besides, 
not all four thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine of these signatures are 
actual names. There aren't that many people in the kingdom who can read and 
write. A lot of these are simply X's. Anyone can make a bunch of different X's. 
How hard can it be?"
"So then you are denying the validity of the petition?" asked Queen Sandy.
"Well, how do I know that all of these signatures represent real people?" King 
Billy replied. "None of these names are known to me, to say nothing of all these 
X's."
" Tis because none of your subjects are known to you," Queen Sandy replied, 
putting down her hairbrush and turning in her seat to face him. "You do not even 
know the names of our servants here in the palace."
"I do so," King Billy protested.
"Name three."
"There's the royal seneschal, and the royal cook, and-"
"Their names, not their titles."
"I always address them by their titles. 'Tis a measure of my esteem for them." -
" 'Tis a measure of something," Queen Sandy replied sarcastically, "and a rather 
full measure, at that. The point is, William, you are merely making excuses. You 
are seeking for a way to deny the validity of the petitions because you are 
afraid to do anything about them. And you are afraid of doing anything about 
them because you are afraid of Warrick."
"I am certainly not afraid of Warrick!"
"You are. Tis the truth and you know it. There's no use denying it."
"Well... perhaps I am a little bit afraid," admitted King Billy. "But after all, 
he is the most powerful wizard in all the twenty-seven kingdoms!"
"He is but the royal wizard," said Queen Sandy. "You are the king. You outrank 
him."
"I think he tends to forget that," King Billy replied.
"Then remind him," said Queen Sandy. "Be assertive!"
"Suppose he gets angry?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, William! What if he does? Exert your authority! You are 
the king!"
"True, dearest, but you know how I detest emotional confrontations. They always 
make my stomach feel queasy."
"All these petitions should make your stomach feel queasy," she replied. "Each 
petition is more demanding than the last, and each bears more signatures, as 
well. If this sort of thing keeps up, soon these petitions will grow into a 
movement, and then the movement will grow into a revolt. I don't know about you, 
William, but I have no wish to see my head displayed upon a pike."
"You exaggerate, my dearest," King Billy said with a smile. "Such a thing could 
never come to pass. We are quite well protected by our palace guard, you know."
"How many men make up the palace guard?"
"One hundred and fifty of our finest soldiers," said King Billy confidently.
"And how many signatures are on that last petition?" asked Queen Sandy dryly.
"Hmmm. I fear I see your point," King Billy said. "This really is a most awkward 
situation. But what would you have me do?"
"Go to Warrick," said Queen Sandy. "No. On second thought, 'tis past time for 
you to start acting more kingly. Send for Warrick and order that he come to you 
with a full accounting of his actions. Command him to tell you what he has done 
with all those people. Insist upon a complete explanation. Each time the royal 
sheriff fills the dungeons, Warrick empties them again. What's become of all 
those prisoners? Aren't you in the least bit curious? And while you're at it, 
you might rescind some of these new edicts the royal sheriff keeps coming up 
with. It would show that you have not ignored all those petitions and that you 
are responsive to the wishes of your people."
"The royal sheriff wouldn't care for that," King Billy said. "He'd think that I 
was undermining his authority."
"He has no authority except that which you give him!"
"Well, I suppose that's true," King Billy admitted, "but you know how he is when 
he doesn't get his way. He becomes quite surly and he threatens to resign. He 
really can be very difficult, you know."
"Then remove him from his post and appoint another sheriff!"
"But, Sandy, dearest, he's my own brother!"
Queen Sandy rolled her eyes and sighed with exasperation. "Well, I can see that 
this discussion is getting us nowhere. I really don't know what to do with you, 
William. I've tried, by the gods, I have really tried to talk some sense into 
you, but despite all of my best efforts, you simply refuse to listen. You seem 
to care more about what Warrick might think, and what your brother might think, 
than you do about what your own wife thinks. Well, so be it. Since it seems you 
care nothing for my advice and my opinions, then there is little point in going 
on with this. You do what you want, William, I'm going to bed."
"Now, dearest, don't be upset," King Billy said, getting up and holding his arms 
out to her. Only instead of the expected hug, he wound up catching the blanket 
she tossed to him. "What's this?"
"What do you think? 'Tis your blanket. I wouldn't want you to catch a chill, 
sleeping on the sofa."
"The sofa? But, dearest-"
"Good night, William." She took him by the shoulders, turned him around, and 
firmly marched him out of the royal bedchamber, shutting the door behind him.
"Sandy!"
He heard her bolt the door behind him.
"Uneasy is the head that wears the crown," King Billy said, shaking his uneasy 
head with resignation. And with a long and melancholy sigh, he headed for the 
royal sofa.
By this point, the reader might be wondering-as was Queen Sandy-about what's 
been happening to all these people who have been disappearing from the royal 
dungeons, after being turned over to you-know-who. Never fear, your faithful 
narrator hasn't forgotten about them and you're about to find out exactly what 
did happen to them, but first we'll have to backtrack just a bit.
From the moment Brewster's first time machine materialized in the sky high above 
the Redwood Forest, deployed its automatic parachute, and floated gently to the 
ground, it boded ill for anyone who came in contact with it. Perhaps it was 
simply one of those machines, you know the ones I mean, those which are somehow, 
mysteriously, inherently evil. Now there are those who will insist that this 
sort of thinking is utter nonsense, that machines are simply devices, inanimate 
objects with no personality whatsoever, and in fact, your faithful narrator was 
once one of these skeptics. However, an unfortunate experience with a motorcycle 
that purely tried to kill me every time I threw a leg over it-and not just once 
in a while, mind you, but every single time-changed my thinking on that issue. 
Some machines are just plain nasty.
Brewster had trouble with it right from the beginning. At first, it simply 
wouldn't work right. Then, it worked too well, and too quickly, disappearing on 
its journey without Brewster. It had drifted for a considerable distance and 
landed in the center of a road right where Long Bill, Fifer Bob, and Silent Fred 
were serving their shift, lurking in the hedgerows.
"What do you think it is?" Fifer Bob said as they slowly circled the strange 
device.
"Some sort of magical contraption," Long Bill said knowingly.
"What makes you think so?" asked Fifer Bob.
"Well, it came down out of the sky, didn't it?" said Long Bill. "What else could 
it be?"
"I don't think we should touch it," Fifer Bob said. "It might be dangerous."
Silent Fred stood behind him, stroking his red beard thoughtfully. He did a lot 
of thinking, Silent Fred did. Because he hardly ever spoke, no one was ever 
quite certain what he was thinking about, but he sure did a lot of it.
"You think anyone's inside there?" asked Long Bill.
"Hallo!" shouted Fifer Bob. "Anyone in there?" He waited, then approached a 
little closer, peering through the plastic bubble. "I don't see anyone inside."
"Knock on it," said Long Bill.
"You knock on it," said Fifer Bob.
"Well, to knock on it, I'd have to touch it, wouldn't I?" Long Bill replied. 
"You said it could be dangerous."
"So you want me to knock on it? No, thank you. Use your staff."
" 'Tis a brand new staff," Long Bill protested.
Silent Fred neatly solved the problem by stepping up behind Fifer Bob and giving 
him a shove. Bob cried out as he came in contact with the machine, then pushed 
himself away from it as if it were burning hot. He spun around to confront 
Silent Fred, who merely shrugged.
"Must be okay to touch it," said Long Bill. "Now the question is, what do we do 
with it?"
"It must be worth some money," Fifer Bob said.
"Aye, I suppose we could sell it," said Long Bill, scratching his long jaw. 
"There's that wizard who lives a few days journey down the road toward 
Pittsburgh."
"Blackrune 4?" said Fifer Bob. "But what if he's the one who made it? We 
couldn't sell a wizard his own property now, could we?"
"Perhaps not," Long Bill said, "but there may be a reward for finding it. 
Besides, I do not think he could have made this strange device. He's not much of 
a wizard, from what I hear."
"We should be taking this to Shannon," Fifer Bob said.
"Then we'd have to share the proceeds with the others," Long Bill said. "If we 
sold it ourselves, and kept quiet about it, we could keep it all."
"Shannon wouldn't like that," Fifer Bob said. "She'd skin us, she would."
"Not if she didn't know about it," said Long Bill.
They exchanged conspiratory glances.
"Get the cart," Long Bill said.
After a great deal of grunting and groaning and heaving and a couple of near 
hernias, they managed to wrestle the machine up onto a cart and take it to the 
wizard known as Blackrune 4, who promptly cheated them by paying them off with 
changeling money. (That's the kind that turns into something else after the 
transaction has occurred. In the case of the three brigands, they found 
themselves with a large bag of acorns by the time they returned home, and rather 
man risk humiliation by admitting they'd been cheated, to say nothing of the 
considerable risk of bodily harm they would incur if the other brigands found 
out what they'd done, they simple wrote it off as a bad business transaction and 
kept their mouths shut.)
The wizard known as Blackrune 4 had been the next to suffer from the jinxed 
machine. After trying a whole succession of divination spells in an attempt to 
discover the purpose of the peculiar apparatus, he managed to stumble onto a 
spell that tapped into its energy field, activating it by magical remote 
control. The result was that the machine transported him to Los Angeles without 
actually going anywhere itself, which meant that he was stranded. Arrested for 
vagrancy and suspicion of being a graffiti artist, the wizard wound up serving 
some time in the drunk tank, eventually becoming one of those street people who 
wander around talking to themselves and gesturing wildly all the time. 
Stubbornly, Blackrune 4 kept trying to conjure up his spells, only none of them 
would work. Eventually, he just went batty.
The next victim of the missing time machine was Blackrune 4's apprentice, who 
waited a decent length of time before deciding that his master wasn't coming 
back from wherever he had disappeared to, then took the time machine to the 
Grand Director of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, who questioned him at length 
as to exactly what Blackrune 4 had done before he disappeared. To make certain 
the apprentice had it right, he made him step into the machine, then spoke the 
spell that Blackrune 4 had used. The apprentice vanished, to reappear in New 
York's Greenwich Village, where after a brief period of confusion, he wound up 
living with a cute, nineteen-year-old performance artist and singing lead vocals 
in a thrash rock band. But then, he was young, and as we all know, kids are 
pretty resilient. So, all told, he didn't come out of it too badly. (In fact, 
his first album was shipped platinum.)
After the way the apprentice had vanished into thin air, the Grand Director 
realized that he had something fairly powerful on his hands, so he embarked upon 
a long series of cautious experiments. One by one, without bothering to tell 
King Billy about it, he had prisoners brought up from the royal dungeons and 
strapped into the time machine, whereupon he spoke the spell and watched to see 
what happened, each time hoping he could somehow discover exactly how it 
happened.
Now, the royal dungeons weren't exactly full to capacity to begin with, much to 
the royal sheriff's disappointment, for he dearly loved making arrests. As 
laid-back and mellow as King Billy was, his younger brother, Waylon, was surly 
and mean-tempered. Even as children, the boys were as different as two boys 
could possibly be. William liked to feed small animals with bread crumbs and 
leftovers from his meals. Waylon liked to kill and torture them in a dazzling 
variety of ways. In other words, he wasn't a very nice lad. And as he grew 
older, he didn't get any better. In fact, he got worse.
Waylon resented the fact that his brother was king due merely to the accident of 
having been born first. It wasn't fair, thought Waylon. And quite probably, it 
wasn't. Billy was born only a year earlier and he automatically got to be the 
king, while Waylon didn't automatically get to be anything. Billy had made him 
royal sheriff, but he could just as well have decided to make him nothing and 
there wouldn't have been anything Waylon could do about it. But then, that's the 
way life is. One of the most pernicious ideas ever foisted upon a gullible 
public is the notion that life ought somehow to be fair. It isn't, and nothing 
says it should be. (Trust me, I looked it up. Couldn't find it anywhere.) 
Unfortunately, people keep going through life thinking that it should be fair, 
which results in a lot of really frustrated and unhappy people. And Sheriff 
Waylon was certainly no exception.
The trouble was, he didn't really have a lot to do. With King Billy's laissez 
faire attitude toward government, it was actually quite difficult to get 
arrested in Pittsburgh. You pretty much had to do something fairly nasty. 
Stealing was against the law, of course, but one actually had to be caught 
stealing, and The Stealers Guild could provide a number of very helpful 
pamphlets to show cutpurses and alleymen how to avoid being caught. Most large 
cities were like that. Simply because some activity happened to be against the 
law, that did not mean that there couldn't be a perfectly legal guild devoted to 
the practitioners of that activity. The Stealers Guild was a good case in point.
The Stealers Guild met in The Stealers Tavern, on the corner of Cutthroat and 
Garotte, a popular watering hole for all types of questionable characters of 
questionable character. In fact, Sheriff Waylon hung out there quite a lot. He 
was on a first-name basis with the tavern keeper, all the serving wenches, and 
most of the regulars, as well. These regulars were all a bunch of criminals, of 
course, but unless Sheriff Waylon could actually catch them in the act, he 
couldn't touch them. (Unless, of course, he could find witnesses to testify 
against them, but since there was no such thing as a Witness Relocation and 
Protection Guild, there wasn't very much chance of that.)
"Good evening, Sheriff," the regulars would say to Waylon. "Arrest anyone 
today?"
Sheriff Waylon would scowl and hammer his fist upon the bar and say, "If the law 
had any teeth in it, by the gods, I'd arrest the whole bloody useless lot of 
ya!"
"Aye, 'tis a terrible thing," the regulars agreed, nodding sympathetically. 
"Here, have yourself a drink, Sheriff. 'Twill make you feel better."
And so the days went for Sheriff Waylon, sitting in The Stealers Tavern and 
suffering the humiliation of having all the criminals buy him drinks, then 
staggering home in a numb, drunken stupor, where he would have to listen to his 
wife's monotonous harangue. "If you'd only been born a lousy year earlier, I 
could have been Queen! But, noooooo...."
However, all that changed when Waylon's big brother, the king, came to the Grand 
Director's alabaster tower to protest his minions snatching people off the 
streets for his experiments, which had brought about the first in a long stream 
of angry petitions. Their solution to the problem had been to use the prisoners 
in the royal dungeons, instead of people abducted off the streets, which had 
seemed reasonable to King Billy, only the royal dungeons had already been 
depleted. However, the Grand Director had a solution to that problem, as well. 
Why not introduce a few new edicts, he suggested, to tighten up on miscreants 
and thereby obtain a few more prisoners?
"'Twas an excellent idea, too," said Warrick. "The streets were teeming with 
criminals, and 'twas time something was done about it."
Don't interrupt. And wait your turn.
"You cannot avoid me by referring to me as the Grand Director or as 
you-know-who," said Warrick. "I know what you're up to."
Look, do you mind? I'm doing some narrative exposition here.
"Well, then, get on with it. The tale is beginning to drag."
Suddenly, an earthen vessel on a shelf where Teddy was dusting became dislodged. 
It fell and struck Warrick on the head, shattering and knocking him unconscious.
"Ooops," said the troll.
Now then, where were we? Ah, yes, we were discussing the introduction of new 
edicts to clamp down on lawlessness in Pittsburgh and keep a fresh supply of 
prisoners flowing into the royal dungeons. Not wanting to be troubled with 
thinking up new edicts by himself, the king agreed to let the royal sheriff 
handle that extra bit of paperwork, and that was when Sheriff Waylon truly came 
into his own.
With the king's naive carte blanche, Waylon devised a whole slew of 
unprecedented, new, repressive edicts, the better to ensure that there would be 
more laws for the populace to break. With Waylon's inherent talents for flowery 
legalese and obfuscation, these edicts were written in such a way that hardly 
anyone could understand them, which practically guaranteed numerous arrests. The 
effect this had on Waylon was dramatic. Almost overnight, he changed completely.
He became imbued with a new sense of purpose as his deputies started making more 
arrests, and he felt a great deal happier, as well. He began to comb his hair 
and trim his beard and, in general, pay more attention to his overall 
appearance. Even his wife noticed the change.
"Is that a new suit?" she asked him.
"Aye. I've bought a brand-new wardrobe, all in black velvet, trimmed with 
scarlet. 'Twill be my new look. Very dashing, don't you think?"
" Tis been a long time since you bought me a new dress."
"What's wrong with the old one?"
"What was wrong with your old suit?" she countered.
" Twas worn and threadbare. And not very stylish. The royal sheriff has to look 
the part, you know, for people to respect the office."
"What about the royal sheriff's wife?"
"Her office is to scrub the floors and do the cooking. She needs no new dress 
for that."
"Well, aren't we high and mighty all of a sudden? Scrub the floors and cook, is 
it? And I, who could have had a score of royal servants to do the cooking and 
the cleaning and new dresses by the closetful if you'd been born before your 
brother! But noooo, instead of queen, I'm Mrs. Royal Sheriff, thank you very 
much, and must keep inside for shame of being seen in my old rags, while my 
husband dresses like a bloody peacock and carouses all night in the taverns! 
Respect for your office, is it? I'll show you respect, you oaf!"
"Oh, by the way, my love, have you heard about the brand-new edict yet? The one 
concerning shrewish wives?"
"No," she ventured cautiously.
"Just signed into law this morning," Waylon said cheerfully. "Any husband 
complaining of a shrewish wife may have his complaint investigated and if the 
claim's discovered to be true, the offender is dragged off to the royal 
dungeons."
"And who does the investigating?" she asked uncertainly.
"Why, the royal sheriff, of course."
"I see," she replied. " Tis a most handsome suit, my husband. What would you 
like for dinner?"
Eventually, word began to spread that the prisoners in the royal dungeons were 
being taken to the alabaster tower of Warrick the White, from which they never 
again emerged. Exactly what was done with them there was something no one knew 
for certain, but that only whetted the public appetite for fresh rumors, which 
were always available from the local rumor mongers. Almost every street corner 
in Pittsburgh had one now, because it was a sellers market, and the Rumor 
Mongers Guild was handing out fresh licenses as quickly as they could have the 
scrollmakers make them up.
"Rumors! Get your fresh, hot rumors here!"
"I'd like a rumor, please."
"That'll be two bits."
"Two bits? I say, that's a bit steep."
" Tis the going rate, you know."
"Are you a licensed rumor monger?"
"Absolutely. Here, see? There's me scroll."
"How do I know 'tis a genuine rumor monger's license?"
"You can read, can't you?"
"Uh...never mind. I suppose it looks all right. Very well, here's two bits. I 
want to hear a rumor."
"Well, rumor has it Warrick's taking all the prisoners from the royal dungeons 
and turning 'em into dwarves, then sending 'em to work the mines up in the 
mountains."
"But I already heard that rumor last week!"
"Oh, you want the latest rumor then?"
"Well, that's what I said, didn't I?"
"No, you merely said you'd like to hear a rumor."
"I meant the latest rumor."
"Ah, well, you didn't specify. That'll be two bits, milord."
"1 already paid you two bits!"
"That was for last week's rumor."
"But I already heard last week's rumor!"
"Well now, how was I to know that? You asked for a rumor, I sold you a rumor. 
You see the sign? It says, 'No refunds.' You paid for a rumor, you got a rumor."
"See here, you're trying to cheat me! I'm going to report you to the Better 
Business Guild!"
"Well now, milord, I'm sorry you feel that way, but you see, 'twas a perfectly 
legal business transaction. You requested a rumor, and you were sold a rumor. 
That's straight mongering, that is. If you wanted the latest rumor, you should 
have specified the latest rumor. I can't be held responsible."
"You're a bloody robber, is what you are! I want the latest rumor!"
"That'll be three bits, milord."
"You said two bits before!"
"We reserve the right to change the price at any time, due to prevailing market 
conditions. If you wish the latest rumor, I would suggest you buy now, before 
the price increase."
"But you've already increased the price!"
"I mean the next price increase. Which is liable to come at any minute now."
"All right, all right, here's three bits, blast you! Now I wish the absolutely 
latest rumor, you understand?"
"Right. Well, rumor has it Warrick is taking all the prisoners from the royal 
dungeons and stealing their life force in an attempt to come up with an 
immortality elixir."
"No!"
"Oh, aye, milord. 'Tis the very latest rumor."
"Who'd you hear it ftom?"
"I have it on very good authority."
"By the gods! That's terrible!"
"Aye, milord, I quite agree. Check back with me tomorrow and I'll let you know 
if there's been any new developments."
"Is that included in the price?"
"Well, no, milord, you paid only for the latest rumor as of today. Tomorrow 
it'll be a brand-new rumor. We rumor mongers have to make a living too, you 
know."
So with rumors flying and the demand driving the price up every day, the stories 
spread like wildfire through every tavern and marketplace in Pittsburgh. Amid 
all the conflicting rumors, one thing remained clear. Warrick's minions had 
stopped snatching people off the streets, but now the sheriff's deputies were 
doing it for him, under the justification of the new, repressive edicts. The 
king had not responded to the petitions after all, but had merely devised an 
elaborate subterfuge for Warrick's benefit. And so, poor, Bumbling King Billy 
got the blame and while the concept of impeachment hadn't been invented yet, 
regicide was a well-established practice, with a long and respectable tradition 
behind it. King Billy didn't know it yet, but his job-and his very life-were 
hanging by a thread.
In the meantime, Warrick did not concern himself with such trivial matters. 
(Warrick? Good, he's still unconscious. And Teddy's hiding underneath the 
stairs.) One after another, Warrick had the prisoners from the royal dungeons 
brought into his sanctorum, where he had Teddy strap them into the machine. 
Initially, he had simply activated the machine by magic, and watched the 
prisoners disappear, hoping that close observation would reveal something about 
what happened to them. However, that did not prove very productive, so he then 
attempted to reverse the spell to see if he could bring them back. However, 
after a number of unsuccessful efforts, he decided to abandon that approach. He 
tried scrying with his crystal ball, in an attempt to see if the visions in the 
crystal would reveal where the subjects of his experiments had gone, but no 
matter how hard he concentrated and focused his energies, the crystal remained 
cloudy and the fate of the vanished prisoners remained unknown.
Warrick then embarked upon a new course of action. He placed each of his 
subjects under a spell of compulsion before he had them strapped into the 
machine, a spell that would compel them to return to his sanctorum and reveal 
what happened to them. If he couldn't find a way to bring them back, he figured, 
he'd place a spell upon them that would irresistibly compel them to find their 
own way back. Exactly how they would manage to accomplish this was not his 
problem. Sooner or later, one way or another, he was certain that at least one 
of them would manage to return from wherever he was sending them, and then he'd 
know exactly what was going on.
Unfortunately, this made things rather difficult for the subjects of his 
experiments. As we have already established, the time machine was not designed 
to be operated by magical remote control, and so this method of operation had 
certain rather erratic results. The hapless subjects of Warrick's experiments 
were not all sent to the same place. When Blackrune 4 had accidentally stumbled 
upon the spell in the first place, he had managed to transport himself to Los 
Angeles. That same spell later transported his apprentice to the East Village in 
New York. Subsequent experiments transported Warrick's subjects to places as 
diverse as Tokyo, Honolulu, Paris, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Liverpool, Tijuana, 
Rapid City, Albuquerque, Johannesburg, and Sydney. Once there, Warrick's hapless 
subjects were then faced not only with the shattering reality of a completely 
different universe, but seized with a powerful, irresistible compulsion to 
return from whence they came. Only they had no time machine to do it with.
Not to put too fine a point on it, this caused certain problems. Dropping 
residents of a primitive, medieval city into a modern, high-tech metropolis such 
as New York or Tokyo, and on top of that, imbuing them with an insane, 
relentless, driven urge to get back home no matter what, was akin to locking a 
claustrophobic gorilla inside a narrow linen closet. And considering that a 
large number of these people were criminally inclined to begin with, the result 
was a series of highly unusual incidents.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of Warrick's subjects attacked a mounted 
policeman and knocked him off his horse, then stole the horse and led the police 
on a mad chase as far as Corrales, where it took six cruisers and a dozen men to 
cut him off and subdue him.
In New York City, a wild-eyed young man battered his way through the divider 
between the driver and the rear passenger section, held a dagger to the cabbie's 
throat, and demanded to be taken to Pittsburgh. The terrified cabbie drove him 
all the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his passenger raving all the 
while, and when his passenger insisted that it wasn't Pittsburgh, that it looked 
nothing at all like Pittsburgh, and if he didn't take him to Pittsburgh right 
away, he would fillet him, the cabbie dove out of the car and escaped with only 
minor injuries while the cab crashed into a bridge abutment and exploded.
In Tokyo, Japan, a strangely garbed man went berserk and ran screaming through 
the streets, knocking into people and picking up whatever he could find and use 
as weapons, causing numerous injuries until police subdued him and found someone 
who could speak English (for as we all know from watching Star Trek, everyone in 
the entire universe speaks English, while hardly anyone speaks Japanese), 
whereupon they found that the man was convinced he had been transported to the 
underworld, where he was surrounded by slanty-eyed demons who gibbered at him 
incomprehensibly and wanted to possess him. He kept babbling something about a 
"sanctorum" in Pittsburgh, so they gagged him and stuck him in a straitjacket 
and put him on a plane to the United States, where he eventually wound up in a 
sanitarium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, a man appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a 
busy street and ran amok, dodging between vehicles and screaming until he was 
shot down in a hail of gunfire from passing motorists.
In London, England, a wild-eyed young woman suddenly appeared in the House of 
Commons and started shouting and waving her arms about. For about ten minutes, 
no one could hear her over the noise made by other MP's, but eventually she got 
the floor and a lively debate ensued.
In Memphis, Tennessee, a pockmarked, ale-ravaged, young prostitute arrested in 
The Stealers Tavern for refusing to give one of the sheriff's deputies a freebie 
suddenly materialized onstage, behind a mike, in the middle of an Allman 
Brothers concert. Frightened out of her wits, she started tearing her hair and 
wailing about wanting to get back home. The audience gave her a standing ovation 
and she was hailed as a great white blues artist, given a recording contract 
with Atlantic Records, and about nine months later, she disappeared after giving 
birth to a beautiful boy with long blond hair.
In Boulder, Colorado, a wiry young man mysteriously appeared out of nowhere in 
Scott Carpenter Park, in the middle of a Society for Creative Anachronism 
weapons practice session, where he grabbed a heavy wooden sword and proceeded to 
lay waste to the entire field. When it was all over and the grassy meadow was 
littered with broken, bleeding bodies, the surviving members of the medievalist 
group awarded him a title. The puzzled young man was then escorted off the field 
by several shapely young women in full armor and was not seen again for two 
weeks, when he was observed to be in shock, walking unsteadily, with a dazed 
expression on his face and three favors bound around his sword arm.
Some of these incidents passed all but unnoticed, except in the localities where 
they occurred, others managed to make national headlines, and it wasn't long 
before a certain reporter for a Florida-based tabloid of questionable 
journalistic integrity noticed a pattern beginning to emerge.
Now, whether this reporter was simply a throwback to another time, or had seen 
too many episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker was a question that was open to 
debate, but it should suffice to say that after twenty-five odd years in the 
newspaper business, he had been fired from some of the best jobs in journalism 
and had finally struck the bottom of the barrel, where he remained comfortably 
ensconced with a bottle of Jack Daniels. Outside his chosen field, he was 
virtually unknown, but in the journalism business, Colin Hightower was infamous.
Few people could approach the colorful uniqueness of his resume. He had once 
been punched in the nose by Benjamin Bradlee, and on another memorable occasion, 
he had been kneed in the groin by Barbara Walters. He had been shot at with a 
.44 Magnum by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and Geraldo Rivera had once 
tried to run him over on the streets of New York City with a Kawasaki 
motorcycle. Anchorwoman Diane Sawyer got the hiccups every time his name was 
mentioned and Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner was alleged to have chased him 
through the lobby of the Fontainbleu Hotel with a baseball bat.
The man who prompted such extreme reactions looked nothing if not placidly 
average and normal. Born and raised in Liverpool, Colin Hightower came to the 
United States to pursue a career as an investigative journalist after being 
fired from the London Daily Mirror over an incident allegedly involving Princess 
Margaret and a rock group called The Yardbirds. Of average height and with a 
stocky build, he had the rosy-cheeked, wide face of a friendly Irish bartender, 
with an easy smile and eyes that twinkled like those of a mischievous 
ten-year-old. He habitually dressed in rumpled khaki twill trousers and 
shapeless, nondescript sport coats, and on the rare occasions when he wore a 
tie, it was always at half mast, with the top two buttons of his frayed, 
button-down-collar shirt undone. There was never any danger of his being wooed 
by the television media, because he simply wasn't telegenic. Even Jimmy Breslin 
looked better on camera than he did. Besides, Colin's first love was always the 
print medium and he considered himself a purist. Damon Runyon would have loved 
him, but the only public figure who ever had a kind word to say about him was G. 
Gordon Liddy, who once described him as "a tough, old snapper who knows how to 
hold his liquor."
Unfortunately, Hightower's breed of newspaper reporter had died out with the 
birth of the Columbia School of Journalism and Colin was as out of place in 
modern newspaper reporting as an Edsel at a sports-car rally. Nevertheless, he 
persevered, stubbornly refusing to change. For Colin, the only thing that 
mattered was The Story. And when he first noticed the strange pattern of 
similarities in these apparently isolated incidents occurring at different 
locales throughout the world, he began to suspect that he had stumbled on a big 
one.
"Listen to this, Jack, here's another one," he said as he barged into his 
editor's office without knocking. "Man comes wandering in out of the Sonoran 
Desert in Tucson, Arizona, half dead from exposure and raving like a lunatic."
"Colin...."
"No, listen! Get this... he's dressed up in medieval clothing, and he keeps 
babbling about Pittsburgh and somebody named Warwick or Warrick. He's taken to 
ER and given treatment, but he breaks out and takes off again, injuring two 
doctors and three nurses, and he hasn't been seen since."
"Look, Colin...."
"Don't you see, Jack? It's the same as all the others! The weird, medieval-style 
clothing, the references to Warrick or Warwick and Pittsburgh and the white 
tower... over and over again, in all these different, seemingly isolated 
incidents, the same things keep coming up. Here's one in Albuquerque, here's 
another one in London, and one in New York, and another one in Tokyo-"
"All right, Colin!"
"All right, what?"
"All right, you can do the story, I give up! You're driving me crazy. So do it, 
already. What's your angle?"
"I don't know yet," Hightower replied. "But I'm going to follow up on all these 
common threads. Find out who this Warrick or Warwick is, what the deal is with 
this tower they keep talking about-"
"So then you're going to Pittsburgh?"
"To begin with, yeah. They've got one of these people locked up in a sanitarium 
there. But I'm going to track down each and every one of these different 
incidents and-"
"And it'll cost a fortune in traveling expenses," said the editor.
"So what? This is a real news story, Jack, not one of those World War Two planes 
discovered on the moon, things you've got those hacks out there dreaming up. 
It's off the wall, it's mysterious, and it's genuine, for God's sake!"
"Okay, okay, you've talked me into it. But I want receipts for every dime you 
spend, you understand?"
"You got it. You won't regret this, Jack. There's something big here, I can 
smell it."
"Yeah, yeah, just go. Bring me a story. What the hell, it'll be nice to do some 
real investigative journalism for a change. Just try not to run the bills up."
So Colin Hightower, intrepid newshawk from a bygone time, started to 
investigate. He had no doubt there was a story here. He had also had no doubt 
that this investigation would take him fairly far afield. What he did not 
suspect was just how far.
 
CHAPTER EIGHT
 
"I still don't understand the part about the traveling," said Rory the dragon, 
sitting on the parapet of Brewster's tower, his huge, leathery wings folded back 
and his powerful, iridescent claws gripping the stone masonry.
It was a quiet, moonlit night, and the clearing below was peaceful, everyone 
having staggered home after the feast. Rory had dropped in-literally, out of the 
sky-to perch on Brewster's tower and chat with him about the world he came from. 
Rory's curiosity about Earth was due to the curious fact that dragons happen to 
dream about our universe, and there are many things that dragons see in their 
dreams about our world that they do not quite understand.
"Well," said Brewster, "you're supposed to continue dribbling as you move down 
the court, and if you take more than three steps without dribbling, then that's 
traveling, and that's a foul."
"I still don't quite understand," said Rory, in a voice that sounded like a 
cross between a cement mixer and a locomotive. "The point of the game is to 
travel down the court and stuff the little ball into the netted hoop, and yet 
one is penalized for traveling?"
"No, no," said Brewster, "you're penalized for traveling if you don't dribble at 
the same time."
"Doesn't that make the playing court rather messy?" asked the dragon.
"No, no," said Brewster, shaking his head, "you don't understand. Not drooling, 
dribbling."
"What's the difference?" asked the dragon.
"Dribbling is what it's called when you bounce the ball as you travel down the 
court," Brewster explained. "They simply call it dribbling. The players 
themselves don't actually dribble."
"Then why do they call it dribbling? Why don't they simply call it bouncing?" 
Rory asked.
Brewster shrugged. "I haven't the faintest idea," he replied. "I'd never really 
thought of it that way before."
"Oh, very well," the dragon said. "Let it pass for now. So this bouncing of the 
ball is known as dribbling, correct?"
"Right," said Brewster.
"And one must do this dribbling whilst one travels down the court?"
"Correct," said Brewster.
"But traveling is not permitted and is called a foul?"
"That's right," said Brewster.
"Then how in thunder does one get to the opposite end of the playing court to 
make a basket?" asked the dragon, frowning.
"You dribble," Brewster said.
"As you travel," said the dragon.
"Right," said Brewster.
"But traveling is a foul?"
"Correct."
"Then how do you get to the other end of the court without committing a foul?"
"You dribble. Or you could pass the ball."
"To whom?"
"To another player."
"On either team?"
"No, only on your team. Otherwise, the other team will get possession of the 
ball and they might make the basket."
"By dribbling to the other end of the court?" the dragon asked.
"Correct."
"But how do they do that without traveling!"
Brewster reached up under his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose between 
two fingers. "I'm not explaining this very well, am I? Sports never was my 
strong suit."
" 'Tis a very foolish-sounding game, if you ask me," said Brian.
The dragon snorted and twin jets of sulphurous smoke streamed from his nostrils. 
"Nobody asked you, Werepot," he replied irritably.
Brian the werepot prince shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he 
crossed his legs and leaned back against the parapet. The moon was full and he 
had reverted to his human form, which was that of a handsome, well-built, young 
man in his twenties, with long, curly blond hair and blue eyes. He was dressed 
in brown and black striped breeches, high boots, a loose-fitting white blouse, 
and a brown velvet jacket and cape. Around his neck, he wore a necklace of 
sapphires and rubies.
"What's the bloody point?" asked Brian. "You're not going to be playing the 
blasted game, are you? Can you imagine how ridiculous it would look, a great, 
big, lumbering leviathan like you galloping down a wood-floored playing court, 
bouncing a rubber ball and wearing a wee, white doublet with a number on it?"
"I never said that I was interested in actually playing the game," the dragon 
replied, "I merely wish to understand it."
"Whatever for?" asked Brian.
"Uh... Rory..." Brewster interrupted, clearing his throat uncomfortably.
"What is it, Doc?" the dragon asked.
Brewster moistened his lips nervously and cleared his throat again. "Would you.. 
.uh.. .mind asking them to stop, please?" He indicated the fairies with a nod of 
his head, then looked away.
It had been difficult enough for him to grow accustomed to his nightly 
storytelling sessions with a dragon, followed by a question and answer period, 
but no matter how he tried, he couldn't seem to get used to the fairies. Since 
meeting Rory and enlisting the dragon's aid in searching for his missing time 
machine, Brewster had come to look forward to the dragon's nightly visits, but 
fairies had a tendency to hover around dragons the way horseflies buzzed around 
a sweaty mare, and their behavior was something Brewster found highly 
disconcerting.
With the exception of their antennae and large, varicolored, gossamer wings, 
they looked completely human, albeit on a miniature scale, and they wore no 
clothing. During the day, at a distance, they could easily be mistaken for large 
butterflies, but at night, they glowed, which made their nudity that much more 
obvious at close quarters. That, in and of itself, could be a bit unsettling, as 
the female fairies all seemed to be uniformly sensual and beautiful and the 
males all handsome and rampantly endowed. What made it worse was their complete 
lack of inhibitions and a sex drive that any jackrabbit would have envied.
They were highly curious, but they had a very limited attention span, and a 
tendency to copulate at the drop of a hat. Sitting on the edge of the parapet 
and having apparently grown bored with the conversation, two of the fairies had 
started to fondle and caress each other, and as Brewster spoke, the female sat 
astride the male's lap, facing him, and they began to... well, you know.
Of course, the other fairies flitting all about the dragon in a cloud began to 
follow suit and, in no time at all, a mass orgy was in progress. They rose up 
into the air, their legs entwined and their wings flapping in unison, and as 
they mated, the glow from them increased, so that they resembled giant fireflies 
with hiccups, enthusiastically bouncing up and down in midair.
"Oh, for God's sake..." said Brewster, turning away in embarrassment. "Have they 
no sense of decorum whatsoever?"
"Apparently not," said Brian, "but they do seem to enjoy themselves."
"Pesky little things," said Rory wryly. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled in the 
direction of the fairies, blowing them hither and yon, sending their naked, 
phosphorescent little bodies tumbling through the air. Brewster exhaled heavily 
himself, only with relief, because when he'd seen the dragon fill his lungs, 
he'd been afraid that Rory would breathe fire at them and the thought of all 
those randy, little fairies being incinerated on his behalf had alarmed him 
greatly.
"Well, I suppose I shouldn't impose my own standards of morality upon another 
race of beings," Brewster said. "I do hope they understand how grateful I am for 
their help in looking for my missing time machine."
"I'm not sure they've been very much help at all," the dragon replied. " Tis a 
miracle if they can hold a thought inside their empty little heads for longer 
than an instant. Still, I keep reminding them."
"How exactly do you communicate with them?" asked Brewster, curious.
"They read my thoughts," Rory replied.
"You mean they're actually telepathic?" Brewster asked with amazement.
"Of course," Rory replied. " 'Tis what makes them so mischievous."
"Aye, never fall asleep in the middle of a forest when fairies are around," said 
Brian. "They will insinuate themselves into your dreams."
"And what will happen?" Brewster asked.
"There's no way of telling," Brian replied. "With any luck, the results will 
merely be humiliating. But they have been known to be fatal."
"You mean they actually.. .kill people? Brewster said with disbelief.
"Oh, aye," said Brian. "Nasty little buggers."
"That's terrible!" said Brewster.
"They don't really mean to be evil," Rory explained. "The concepts of good and 
evil are utterly alien to them. 'Tis merely their way of having fun."
"The thing to do," said Brian, "is burn the garlic herb in your evening 
campfire, and heavily season your food with it, as well."
"So it's like the story about vampires?" Brewster said. "Garlic repels them?"
"It repels everybody," Brian replied with a shrug. "What's a vampire?"
"Dracula," said Rory. "A character from a series of motion pictures made by 
Hammer Film Productions, starring Christopher Lee as the undead elf."
Brewster raised his eyebrows. "The undead elf!"
"Aye, I saw the motion picture vision in a dream once," said the dragon. "They 
didn't really get the details right, but 'twas vastly entertaining, just the 
same."
"Wait a minute," Brewster said. "Dracula was not an elf. He was a fictional 
character created by Bram Stoker, an undead creature who survived by drinking 
human blood."
Brian shrugged. "Sounds like an elf to me."
"Hold it," Brewster said. "You mean to tell me that elves drink human blood!"
"Sure, and everybody knows that," said Brian. "They hang about at night in 
forest glens, sitting 'round their campfires, playing guitars, spouting poetry, 
arguing philosophy, and drinking coffee. The only thing they love more than 
drinking human blood is drinking coffee."
"Coffee-drinking, beatnik, vampire elves?" said Brewster.
"Aye, 'tis a foul-tasting brew," said Brian. "Unfit for human consumption, if 
you ask me. Keeps you from sleeping. A cup or two and you're up all night. 'Tis 
made from a peculiar bean grown in the kingdom of Valdez. Has a pungent sort of 
smell when it brews. If you're walking through the forest and you smell it, then 
sure and there'll be elves about."
"Methinks I smell one coming now," said Rory, sniffing the air experimentally.
No sooner had the dragon spoken than a piercing scream shattered the stillness 
of the night. As Brewster looked down over the parapet, he saw someone come 
bursting out of the trees at the edge of the clearing, running full speed, 
closely pursued by what at first glance appeared to be three Shetland ponies. 
However, a moment later, he saw the gleam of moonlight on their pearlescent 
horns and realized that he was getting his first glimpse of a unicorn.
The three galloping creatures looked exactly the way he'd seen them pictured in 
the fairy tales he'd read as a child, with gleaming, spiral horns, goatlike 
beards, long, flowing manes, and tufted hooves, only their white coats were 
matted with filth and covered with brambles and even at a distance, he could 
smell their rank stench on the evening breeze. It was a stink that would send a 
skunk running for the hills.
"I don't think she'll make it," Brian said, coming up beside Brewster and 
looking down over the parapet.
Brewster saw the unicorn running in the lead put its head down, lowering its 
horn.
"Good God! They'll kill her!" he said with alarm.
"I imagine so," said Brian.
"We've got to do something! Rory, can't you stop them?"
"Why? She's just an elf," replied the dragon with a shrug of his leathery wings.
"Rory, please!" said Brewster, watching as the unicorns rapidly closed in on 
their quarry.
"Oh, very well, if you insist," the dragon said with resignation. He sprang from 
the tower and spread his wings, soaring out in a swooping glide, but even as he 
did so, the lead unicorn caught up with the running elf. With surprising speed, 
the elf pivoted sharply, sidestepped the unicorn's headlong rush, and struck it 
on the head with something she was carrying under her arm. There was a 
percussive, bonking sound, and the unicorn staggered, but just then, the other 
two unicorns came running up and it looked bad for the elf.
With a roar, the dragon came swooping down upon them, belching fire. A blast of 
flame struck the ground just in front of the unicorns and almost caught the elf. 
The unicorns whinnied and took off in the opposite direction, galloping back 
toward the woods in a rapid retreat. The elf was beating at her smoking 
clothing, trying to put out the sparks from the wash of flame that had nearly 
incinerated her. Rory rose and banked sharply, then swooped down again and swept 
her up in one powerful claw. The elf cried out, but the dragon held on firmly, 
though gently, and a moment later, he set her down on the tower in front of 
Brewster and Brian.
"Safe and sound, if a trifle singed," said Rory.
"You nearly roasted me, you great, oafish worm!" the elf said.
"Go and expect gratitude from an elf," said Rory with disgust.
"Are you all right?" asked Brewster.
Her clothing was still smoking here and there. She was dressed all in black, 
with tight black breeches, short black boots, and a black leather vest held 
together with rawhide laces, under which she wore nothing else. Her skin was 
slightly blackened here and there from the dragon's smoky breath. She had a 
black leather choker around her neck, studded with spikes, and matching, spiked, 
black leather bands around her wrists. Her hair, too, was rather spikey. It was 
black, cut short in front and worn longer in the back, covering her neck, and 
large, delicately pointed elvish ears poked up from beneath it. She stood about 
five feet, six inches tall and she was slim, with a wiry, coltish build. Her 
eyes were dark and large and belligerent. In one hand, Brewster noted with 
surprise, she held a set of bongo drums. Her other hand rested on the slim hilt 
of a silver dagger in her belt.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"He's the man who just saved your life," said Brian wryly.
"Indeed?" said Rory. "I could have sworn I had something to do with it."
"Oh, so now you're taking the credit, are you?" Brian said. "You were quite 
prepared to see her impaled until Doc asked you to intervene."
"Well then, I suppose I should thank you," said the elf sullenly. "I am Rachel 
Drum."
"And my name is Brewster. But my friends just call me Doc." He held out his 
hand.
She stared at it for a moment, hesitating, then reached out and shook it. "Well, 
my thanks to you, Doc. If not for your dragon, I would most surely have been 
spiked."
"He's not really my dragon," Brewster replied. "Rory's just a friend. And this 
is another friend, Prince Brian the Bold."
"Not the werepot prince?" she said.
Brian rolled his eyes. "Aye, the very same," he said wearily.
"Faith, and I thought you were just a myth," she said. "There are at least a 
dozen elvish songs about you."
"Ah, the burdens of fame," said Brian.
"Why were the unicorns chasing you?" asked Brewster.
"Obviously, she's a virgin," Brian said.
"I am not a virgin!" replied the elf.
"The unicorns knew better," Brian replied with a grin. "They would have smelled 
a man on you."
"I have never had a man on me, thank you very much," Rachel responded with 
distaste.
Brian frowned. "Then what did you mean when you said you weren't a...." His 
eyebrows rose. "Oh. I see."
"Stupid beasts," said Rachel.
"You mean the unicorns?" asked Brewster.
"I think she means men," said Brian wryly.
"I meant the unicorns," said Rachel, "but some men might well be included in 
that description." She gave him a sour look, then turned to Brewster. "But not 
all men, perhaps. In any event, I thank you and the dragon, both. 'Tis rare for 
a dragon to grant assistance to an elf. Rarer still for humans."
"Perhaps that's because we humans like to keep our blood within our veins, where 
it belongs," said Brian.
"I've never met an elf before," said Brewster. "Do you really drink human 
blood?"
"Do not humans eat the flesh of other creatures?" Rachel countered.
"Well, yes, but..."
"Then you are predators, as well," she said. "But you need have no fear of me. I 
am a vegetarian."
"Better warn the bush," said Brian.
With a rustling sound, Thorny, the peregrine bush, quickly scuttled down the 
stairs.
"You associate with peregrine bushes, dragons, and enchanted princes," Rachel 
said to Brewster. "You must be the new sorcerer who has recently arrived in 
these parts."
"News travels fast," said Brewster.
"Elves have sharp ears," said Brian.
Rachel gave him a sour grimace.
"Sorry. No offense," said Brian, feeling his own, unpointed ear.
"I have come a long way in search of you," said Rachel Drum.
"You have?" said Brewster. "Why?"
"For the reward," said Rachel.
Brewster frowned. "I'm afraid I don't understand. What reward?"
"You have lost something of value, have you not? The fairies say so. Some sort 
of magic chariot? Well, I might know where it is."
As Brewster absorbed this fascinating information, Sean MacGregor and Black 
Shannon were absorbed in one another upstairs at One-Eyed Jack's, where they 
would remain throughout the night and the next day, discovering that outstanding 
swordsmanship was not the only thing they had in common. The three brawling, 
albeit somewhat dim brothers, Hugh, Dugh, and Lugh, were absorbed in a deep and 
dreamless sleep, more of a coma, really, which is usually what happens whenever 
anyone is careless enough to knock down a full mug of peregrine wine in one 
gulp. Harlan the Peddlar, meanwhile, had only one sip of the killer brew, so 
consequently he recovered fairly quickly, and as soon as the evening's 
entertainment-meaning the big sword fight-was concluded, he got directions from 
One-Eyed Jack to Mick O'Fallon's little cottage.
He drove his wagon out of town, down the winding trail leading past Mick 
O'Fallon's place, and he arrived at just about the same time as Mick and Robie, 
Pikestaff Pat and Bloody Bob were returning from the evening's feast at 
Brewster's keep. Unlike most nights, they had partaken of the brew only 
sparingly, as they had important matters to discuss late into the night, and 
Harlan's arrival couldn't have been timed more perfectly.
They were a bit wary when they discovered that they had a visitor, but when 
Harlan introduced himself and said he was a peddlar, searching for unique wares 
to sell, they invited him inside. Harlan wisely, though politely, refused a 
drink of peregrine wine and settled for a cup of Dragon's Breath tea instead, 
one of the non-hallucinogenic brews that Jane had concocted, and after his first 
taste, he allowed as to how he might be interested in carrying Jane's teas among 
his wares, provided an equitable, exclusive distribution agreement could be 
reached. He then looked over Mick O'Fallon's blades, examinining a selection of 
daggers, dirks, and swords, and as he was no stranger to good craftsmanship, he 
immediately pronounced them to be the finest that he'd ever seen.
"Understand now, under normal circumstances, I'd never be quite so enthusiastic 
in my praise," he said. " 'Twouldn't be good business, you see. As a vendor, one 
should never act too impressed with a supplier's goods, else the price is liable 
to go up and that would cut into your profits. However, in this case, with 
craftsmanship so fine, 'tis clear that you know what you're about, O'Fallon, and 
likewise realize the value of your work. 'Twould be insulting to a craftsman of 
your accomplishment to minimize the fruits of such fine labor. In truth, these 
are the finest blades I've ever seen, and I've traveled far and wide throughout 
all the twenty-seven kingdoms, and seen the works of many a fine armorer. None 
could compare with these. However did you manage to forge such a superior grade 
of steel?"
Pleased that the peddlar was well enough informed to appreciate his craft, 
Mick's brawny little chest swelled with pride, but he was not so proud as to 
reveal all his secrets.
" Tis a special process of me own," he replied. " 'Twas taught to me by a great 
wizard from the Land of Ing."
"The Land of Ing?" said Harlan. "S'trewth, and I've never even heard of it. 
Where is it to be found?"
" 'Tis far, far away, in another place and time," said Robie, but he fell silent 
when Mick nudged him.
"Ah, well, have it your way," Harlan said. "I can understand your wanting to 
protect trade secrets, and I wouldn't wish to pry. But I must have these blades 
to sell! You've precious little market out here in the wilds, I should imagine. 
With a vendor such as myself, representing your product in the cities, there 
would be great profits to be made. Great profits, indeed."
"Then we must discuss this matter further," Mick replied, "but first, before we 
do, there is another item I would like to show you, something new, and 
altogether different."
"Ah, yes," the peddlar said. "I have been searching for something altogether 
different, something no one else would have to offer. You have such an item?"
Mick smiled. "I do, indeed," he said, and he brought out the first finished 
example of the "many-bladed knife," complete with nickallirium grips, which he 
had put on and polished to a glossy luster earlier that afternoon.
Marian's eyes grew wide when Mick put it on the table. "S'trewth!" he exclaimed, 
immediately recognizing the grips for what they were. And when Mick displayed 
the knife's many-bladed functions, the peddlar's eyes grew wider still.
"Never in all my days have I seen such a marvelous device!" he exclaimed. "It 
would seem to have more uses than the mind could conceive! You created this?"
"I crafted it," said Mick, "but to be truthful, 'twas not I who created it, but 
a great and wondrous armorer from a far-off land, whose name was Victorinox. The 
original many-bladed knife was shown to me by the sorcerer I told you of, and 
together we made some changes to the pattern, until we arrived at the design for 
this knife here."
"A most useful and marvelous design," said Harlan, turning the knife over and 
over in his hands. "You can make more of these?"
"Aye," said Mick. "As many as you like."
"But 'twould take a long time, surely, to forge a great number of these blades," 
said Harlan.
"I can craft as many as you like," said Mick, "and in less time than you might 
think."
"If I were to commission, say, a dozen such many-bladed knives," said Harlan 
speculatively, "how long would it take you to make them?"
"Oh, a day or two, at most," said Mick.
"A day or two!" The peddlar was astonished. "How is that possible?"
"Through a secret process we employ known as manufacturing," said Bloody Bob, 
then cried out as Mick kicked him under the table.
"A secret process, eh?" said Harlan. "Well, I must admit I'm very curious, but I 
shall not press you for details. 'Tis enough for me to have these blades to 
sell, and ensure that no one else has them to sell but me."
" 'Tis possible we might come to some sort of an arrangement," Mick said, 
"provided everything works out well for all concerned."
"What sort of grips would you employ for the knives that you would make for me?" 
asked Harlan.
"The same as you see there," said Mick. " Tis a rare and special knife, and as 
such, it deserves rare and special grips."
Marian raised his eyebrows. "But these are nickallirium! And of an uncommon 
purity, to boot. Surely, the cost would be prohibitive."
"You might be surprised," said Mick. "The knives are very fine, and would 
undoubtedly be costly, yet not so costly that only the nobility could afford to 
purchase them. Nor so costly that it would preclude a good profit from the 
sale."
Harlan pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Indeed? One might very well infer from 
such a remark that you might have access to a supply of nickallirium from a 
source that is, shall we say, unauthorized?"
"I am not certain what you mean," said Mick evasively.
"Well, merely for the sake of argument," said the peddlar, "let us suppose that 
you did not come by your supply through any of the usual means. That is, you did 
not melt down any coins, nor did you purchase a supply from the Treasury 
Department of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, which occasionally allows the 
purchase of unminted nickallirium by selected craftsmen, albeit at a kingly 
price, for the making of such things as precious jewelry and ornamented weapons 
for the nobility.
"Speaking, once again, purely for the sake of argument," the peddlar continued, 
"one might, therefore, suppose that you came by your supply through means which 
would be called somewhat irregular. Such a transaction would, of course, be 
against the law and, as such, it could result in certain problems for a certain 
vendor, if you get my meaning."
"Perhaps it would," said Mick, "if such was the nature of the source."
"Aye," said Harlan cautiously. "Again, speaking purely for the sake of argument, 
you understand, one could not help but wonder at a source for unminted 
nickallirium that was not acquired through the Guild. Certain persons-not 
speaking for myself, you understand-might suspect that it was stolen."
"I can assure you that it was not stolen," Mick replied.
"And I, of course, would not think of questioning your word," the peddlar said. 
"But certain individuals might insist on proof of such assurances."
Mick and Robie exchanged glances. Pikestaff Pat cleared his throat. Bloody Bob 
just looked confused.
"There is another source of nickallirium that you did not take into account," 
said Mick after a moment's pause, with a significant look at the peddlar.
Harlan simply stared at him, then he looked around at Robie, Pikestaff Pat, and 
Bloody Bob, before turning back to Mick again.
"Do you seriously mean to tell me," he said slowly, "that you actually possess 
the secret of the Philosopher's Stone?"
"Well, let us simply say that we can supply as many knives with grips of 
nickallirium as the market will demand," said Mick.
"Of course, such knives could never be sold cheaply," Pikestaff Pat said.
"And they could not be sold for barter," Robie added. "The purchasers would have 
to pay in coin of nickallirium."
"And the profits would have to be equitably shared," said Mick. "Speaking, as 
you said, purely for the sake of argument, it wouldn't do to have a vendor 
taking more than his agreed-upon share. Such a happenstance could result in 
rather unpleasant repercussions."
"I think we understand one another," Harlan said, choosing his words with care, 
"but let us be absolutely certain of the agreement we are in the process of 
negotiating. For your part, you are saying that you are able to craft as many of 
these wondrous knives as the market will demand, exactly like the one I hold 
here in my hands, so that any orders I may take could easily be filled. And, not 
to put too fine a point on it, if I were to get greedy and be dishonest in my 
dealings with you, I would likely wind up lying somewhere with my throat cut, or 
my back broken, or some other such similar unpleasantness." He nodded. "Very 
well, I can accept this, as I am an honest peddlar, which is why, perhaps, I 
have never been a rich one.
"For my part," he continued, "I would require assurances that I would be the 
exclusive vendor for your products, so that my own profits would thus be 
safeguarded, and so that anyone wishing to purchase your goods would have to 
deal solely with me. I do not feel that this is an unreasonable request. 
Needless to say, should you find my performance wanting in any way, that is to 
say, should I prove unable to develop a proper market for your goods, with an 
acceptable profit for all concerned, you would, of course, be free at that point 
to negotiate some similar agreement with another vendor. But I must be given a 
reasonable length of time in order to develop such a market."
Mick nodded. "That is fair. I think we could live with that."
"And the same conditions would apply, of course, to any other products I might 
undertake to represent for you," said Harlan. "Such as this excellent tea, here. 
And you say you have others, as well?"
"Aye," said Mick. "There are a number of other teas we could supply you with. We 
could also negotiate an agreement for your representing my Mickey Finn."
"Ah, of course, the wine," said Harlan, nodding. He cleared his throat. "A 
unique libation, indeed. I imagine that The Stealers Tavern would pay a pretty 
price to offer such a potent beverage to its patrons. And you could assure me of 
adequate quantity in that commodity, as well?"
Mick nodded. "We could brew up as much Mickey Finn as you can sell."
"Excellent," said Harlan. "Excellent, indeed."
"What about the magic soap?" asked Pikestaff Pat.
"The magic soap?" asked Harlan.
"Aye, 'tis a wondrous dirt remover," Mick said, "that one can use for bathing 
and making oneself smell clean and fresh. I believe that no one else would have 
such a commodity to offer."
"So? Could I see some of this rare substance, and try it out myself?" the 
peddlar asked.
"Of course," said Mick. "We would not expect you to agree to handle our products 
purely on faith. You would be a better vendor for us if you believed in them 
yourself."
"Aye, quite so, quite so," agreed the peddlar. "Well, gentlemen, I must say, 
this has been quite a productive evening thus far. I have been searching for 
unique products to offer to my customers, and you have been in need of an 
aggressive vendor to market your goods. I think we could help each other. Aye, I 
do think so, indeed."
"Then perhaps we should proceed to the finer points of our agreement," Mick 
said.
"Aye, let's do that," said the peddlar with a smile. "But first, I would like 
another cup of this fine tea."
 
The CEO of EnGulfCo International was a forceful and dynamic man, accustomed to 
making decisions and delegating authority. He was a powerful man, but he did not 
wield his power conspicuously. Heads of state frequently dropped whatever they 
were doing just to take his phone calls, and captains of industry looked up to 
him as a paragon of everything to which they aspired. Success, wealth, power, 
and influence. For all that, he was not a very famous man, certainly not one who 
would be easily recognized on the streets.
Though his name was quite well-known in business circles, and always published 
on those lists of the wealthiest and most successful people that the magazines 
come out with every year, he went to great lengths to preserve his privacy and 
avoided being photographed. Once, when a notorious paparazzi popped up out of 
the bushes and snapped his picture on the golf course, then successfully eluded 
his bodyguards, the CEO had managed to avoid having the photograph published by 
putting out some discreet feelers, finding out which magazine had bought the 
rights to it, and then snapping up the magazine in a masterstroke of corporate 
raiding. He had then fired the editor who bought the photograph, brought in a 
new staff, and tripled the publication's circulation. There had been several 
successful attempts to photograph him after that, but for some reason, the 
photographers could not find buyers for the prints.
Subtlety. The CEO believed in subtlety. Practiced on a big-time scale.
In this case, the CEO felt, subtlety was much more than a matter of management 
style. It was absolutely imperative to preserve the secret of Brewster's 
discovery, if indeed, what Pamela Fairburn claimed was true. And it wasn't very 
long before the CEO had satisfied himself that either it was absolutely true, or 
Marvin Brewster had somehow managed to pull off the hoax of the century. 
Frankly, the CEO thought, Marvin Brewster just wasn't that clever. He was smart, 
yes, a genius... but clever? No, not in that sense. As intelligent as Marvin 
Brewster was, the CEO thought, he was no con man. His mind simply didn't work 
that way. Besides, it just didn't add up.
If it was some sort of hoax or con, then what could be his motive? Money? 
Hardly. Marvin Brewster was an unpretentious sort of man, a man of simple tastes 
and with no vices that he knew of. Marvin Brewster didn't care much about money. 
He didn't even understand money. Besides, if money had been the issue, Brewster 
could have easily demanded much more than the highly substantial salary he 
already received, and he would have gotten it, no questions asked. He was worth 
that much to the company and more.
If not money, what then? Fame? Quite possibly, though Brewster didn't seem to be 
the type to court that fickle mistress. Recognition for his work? Ah, yes, the 
CEO thought, that would make sense, but for a man like Marvin Brewster, that 
recognition would have to be genuine, for work that was genuine. He would not 
measure himself against the pop icons of the time, but against men such as 
Galileo, da Vinci, Einstein... and the pride of being able to measure up to such 
men would preclude the possibility of attempting to fake it with a hoax.
No, thought the CEO, Brewster was too honest, sincere, and disingenuous to pull 
off such a stunt. And there was no way he could see how Brewster could have done 
it. He had simply disappeared into thin air, under the watchful eyes of guards 
and cameras. Houdini or David Copperfield might have found a way to do it, but 
not Marvin Brewster. The tapes had all been thoroughly reviewed, the laboratory 
had been thoroughly searched, Pamela Fairburn's phone had been thoroughly 
tapped... there was just no way that Brewster could have done it. Which meant he 
really did it. Disappeared, that is. Somehow, uncannily, Marvin Brewster had 
discovered time travel.
Of course, there was no real evidence of that, the CEO reminded himself, just to 
keep things in perspective. It was also entirely possible that Marvin Brewster 
had found a way to vaporize himself and his machine without a trace. However, in 
that case, the discovery could still be useful. EnGulfCo had a lot of government 
contracts.
Either way, the CEO was determined that no one else would have the secret. 
Whatever in hell the secret was. There was money to be made here. The CEO could 
smell it. His olfactory sense in that regard had always been unusually acute. 
The problem now was how to keep a lid on it.
There were only a few people in a position to blow the thing wide open. One was 
the head of security at EnGulfCo, however, the CEO had discovered a few things 
about his war record, in addition to some of his extracurricular activities in 
such places as Cambodia, Thailand, Rhodesia, and Belize, and there was now very 
little danger of the head of security stepping out of line. Another potential 
source of trouble was the vice-president in charge of research and development, 
along with his secretary. The CEO took care of that one by having the secretary 
transferred to a geological exploration station in Antarctica and getting his 
hands on certain interesting photos of the vice-president of R and D with a girl 
named Mavis, a black leather mask, and a bull whip. The vice-president of R and 
D was married to a woman from Virginia whose father was a highly placed official 
in the CIA, and the CEO expected no trouble on that front.
Finally, there was the executive vice-president of EnGulfCo, a fairly powerful 
man in his own right, and not someone to be trifled with. Therefore, the CEO 
wisely chose not to trifle with him, and instead increased his stock options, 
sponsored him to membership in his own club, introduced him to his attractive 
twenty-three-year-old daughter, and promised to cut him in for a full share of 
the profits, which meant bringing him in on the whole deal. However, that was 
perfectly acceptable, for it meant he now had someone to delegate authority to. 
The CEO would not have liked to handle the whole thing by himself. It would have 
cut into his golf game.
That left only one loose end. Pamela Fairburn. And this was, as the British 
often said, where the wicket got a little sticky. Pamela's father was not only a 
wealthy and socially prominent man, he was also a close personal friend of the 
CEO's. This meant that any leverage exerted on Pamela had to be exerted very 
gently and very carefully. Unfortunately for the CEO, there just wasn't much 
leverage he could find to exert. Pamela was nothing if not a model of proper 
behavior and decorum. There was simply no dirt to be dug up on her. The CEO 
found that annoying. She also didn't work for him, which meant he couldn't give 
her orders. And she was very smart, which meant she couldn't be easily 
manipulated. That left him with only one string to pull. Her concern for Marvin 
Brewster.
He got off the elevator at the top floor and walked past the armed guards, who 
stiffened to attention at his approach. The special palm-scanner lock on the 
door to Brewster's laboratory had been changed. It now responded only to two 
palm patterns. His and Pamela Fairburn's. He pressed his hand flat against the 
scanner plate and the door slid open.
Pamela Fairburn was inside, bent over the papers spread out on Brewster's desk. 
She was dressed in a white lab coat over a sensible skirt and blouse and 
low-heeled pumps. She had pulled her hair back and fastened it with a barette, 
and behind her horn-rimmed glasses, her eyes were red-rimmed, with deep, dark 
bags beneath them. A half-empty pot of coffee stood on the warming plate of the 
drip percolator at the edge of the desk. The ash tray was full of cigarette 
butts.
"Pamela," said the CEO, coming up to the desk. She looked up at him. "You look 
terrible. Have you had any sleep at all?"
She shook her head and glanced toward the cot set back against the wall. "I had 
that cot brought in," she said. "I thought I could catch a few winks if I got 
tired, but I've been working straight through." She smiled wearily and shrugged. 
"Just became caught up, I suppose."
The CEO glanced at the overflowing ash tray and the red packages of Dunhills on 
the desk. "When did you start smoking?"
"Just started," she replied with a glance at the ash tray. "I'm getting rather 
good at it, I think."
The CEO shook his head. "There's no point in driving yourself to exhaustion, 
Pamela. You're doing as much as anyone could do. Perhaps I should have some help 
brought in. Is there anyone you'd like to work with you on this?"
She shook her head. "No, I don't think Marvin would want that. You know how 
secretive he is about his special projects. Besides, the more people know about 
this, the greater the chance of a security leak, and you wouldn't want that now, 
would you?"
The CEO frowned. "I'm not sure what you mean. I'm anxious to take certain 
precautions about Marvin's work, of course, but-"
"You mean precautions such as having me followed and having my phone tapped?" 
she interrupted him. She waved off his protest with a casual gesture. "And don't 
bother to deny it, I'm not a fool, you know. Those casual strollers outside my 
window, the van parked down by the corner, those telltale little clickings on 
the line... I do have some knowledge of electronics, you know."
"Pamela, I-"
"Frankly, you're not really very good at this James Bond business. What did you 
do, hire some sort of seedy little private eye? Haven't you heard of laser 
scanners, dish mikes, and infinity transmitters? Honestly, if you're going to 
eavesdrop on somebody, the very least you could do was have the decency to be 
professional about it."
The CEO rapidly realized that a Pamela Fairburn stoked on nicotine and coffee 
was a force to be reckoned with. Clearly, he had underestimated her. And, just 
as clearly, it was undoubtedly going to cost him.
"Look, Pamela," he began, but that was about as far as he got.
"No, you look," she replied. "I resent your attitude. I resent it very much, 
indeed. What did you think I was going to do, for heaven's sake, call up the 
Daily Mirror and announce that an EnGulfCo scientist had discovered time travel? 
Or did you think, perhaps, that I was going to get on the phone to General 
Electric and ask for .bids on Marvin's notes? Quite aside from the fact that no 
one in their right mind would believe me without substantial proof of such a 
wild assertion, the thought I might have some sort of underlying motive of 
financial gain is positively insulting. I ought to box your ears for you!"
"Pamela, please, try to appreciate my position. I-"
"Appreciate your position?" she said. "What about mine! I happen to be a 
responsible scientist. And quite aside from that, my first and only concern at 
this point is for Marvin's welfare. I've been devoting all my energies and 
effort to this situation ever since Marvin disappeared and this is the thanks I 
get? This is the extent of your support, that you tap my phone and have me 
followed?"
"Pamela, let me assure you that I-"
"The only assurances that I require from you are that you will live up to your 
part of the bargain and back me up with all the resources your company can 
provide," she snapped. "If you want your precious little monopoly on Marvin's 
discovery, that's perfectly all right with me. What I want is Marvin back, safe 
and sound. And just in case you're thinking of placing someone else in charge of 
this, you might wish to know that I've committed certain key sections of 
Marvin's papers to memory and then destroyed the originals, so without me, 
you've got nothing."
"All right, Pamela," the CEO said, knowing when to bite the bullet. "Whatever 
you say, we'll do it your way. I'm not completely insensitive, you know. I'd 
like Marvin back safe and sound, as well. I'm concerned about his welfare, too. 
The question is, can we do anything about it?"
"We can build his time machine," said Pamela, "provided you can supply the key 
components."
"Can you actually do it?" asked the CEO.
"I'm a cybernetics engineer," Pamela replied. "I can read a bloody schematic. 
What's more, I can make sense of Marvin's notes, which is probably more than 
anyone you've got on your payroll can do. I understand him, I know the way he 
thinks. You get me what I need and I'll build his time machine for you, and then 
I'm bloody well going after him."
"You mean you know where he went?" asked the CEO.
"Marvin logged everything he did," Pamela replied. "I have the precise settings 
he was using, right here," she added, tapping her forehead. "I've committed it 
to memory and then I burned the papers, so if you want him back, and if you want 
to find out how his discovery works, then I'm the one you'll have to deal with. 
Understood?"
"Understood," the CEO said quietly.
"Now I've made a list of what I'm going to need," said Pamela, handing him a 
sheet of paper. "And number one on that list is a fresh supply of 
Buckminsterfullerine. I don't know how you're going to get it, or where you're 
going to get it, but I would suggest that you direct your energies chiefly 
toward that end, because without it, Marvin's discovery is as useless as tits on 
a bloody bull. You've said a great deal about EnGulfCo's vast resources and what 
they can accomplish. Well, go and accomplish something, and leave me to my 
work."
"Right," said the CEO. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket, then turned 
and quickly left the lab.
 
CHAPTER NINE
 
It was nearly morning by the time that Brewster and the others-
"One moment. You have been avoiding me ever since Chapter Four. Now I have been 
extremely patient, but my patience is beginning to wear thin. Now who is this 
Brewster?"
All right, now look, Warrick, this really is too much. A little interaction with 
the narrator from time to time during your scenes is one thing, but interrupting 
the narrative flow when it isn't even your turn is something else again. 
Admittedly, this whole business of a character interacting with the narrator is 
a bit irregular, but it's different and it adds a certain off-the-wall spice to 
the story. However, this is getting out of hand.
"You have not answered my question," Warrick said. "And don't bother with that 
space break, cutting to another scene trick. I have devised a counterspell and 
it won't work again."
Threatening the narrator is going to get you nowhere, Warrick. Trust me, it 
really isn't very smart. You're dealing with powers you couldn't even begin to 
understand.
"Is that so?" Warrick countered. "Then how do you explain my ability to break 
into the narrative when it's not even my scene? I have, not been idle during all 
this time, you know. You may have less power than you think. Or I might have 
more than you suspect."
Don't be ridiculous. I'm the one who's telling this story, not you. And I'm not 
about to have one of my characters slipping the leash. Well-developed characters 
that take on a life of their own are usually an asset to a story, but now you've 
brought the momentum of the plot to a screeching halt. This is absolutely 
intolerable. I tell you, I won't have it.
" Twas not I who asked for this, you know," Warrick replied. "I was merely 
minding my own business when you began to tell this tale."
You didn't even exist until I began to tell this tale, for crying out loud!
"That is purely a matter of perspective," Warrick said. " 'Twould depend upon 
your frame of reference."
Listen, I'm not going to sit here and listen to a lecture on relativity from a 
fictional character! What the hell do you know about science, anyway? You're a 
sorcerer, for heaven's sake!
"Any branch of knowledge that is sufficiently advanced would seem like magic to 
one who did not completely understand it."
Damn it, don't you go paraphrasing Clarke to me! He isn't even published in your 
universe!
"A fact does not depend upon publication for its validity," said Warrick. "I 
will grant you that there is much about your reality that I do not fully 
comprehend, but that does not cause me undue concern. As a student of the 
occult, I am disposed to be flexible. Now we have some unfinished business to 
settle, and avoiding answering my questions is not about to make it go away. You 
still have not told me who this Brewster is. Is he some sort of alchemist? Does 
he have anything to do with this time machine apparatus? Is-"
Clang!
Warrick grunted and collapsed to the floor of his sanctorum as Teddy the troll 
brought the frying pan down upon his head.
"Great goblins!" Teddy exclaimed, horrified. "What have I done?''
He gazed at the frying pan in his hand, wondering where it had come from, and 
what had possessed him to strike his master with it.
"Possessed!" Teddy whispered, awestruck. His eyes darted wildly from side to 
side. "I've been possessed! Demons! Voices in the ether!"
He dropped the frying pan and ran screaming from the room.
Well, with any luck, that'll keep Warrick out of the picture for a while. In 
fact, Teddy hit him so hard, he'll probably have a concussion and it will take 
him a few days to recuperate. Poor Teddy will probably need therapy by the time 
this is all over, but it couldn't be helped. Besides, trolls are a little 
schizoid, anyway.
Now where were we? Oh, right.
It was nearly morning by the time that Brewster and the others finished 
listening to Rachel's tale. The first gray light of dawn was showing over the 
treetops and Brian reverted to being a chamberpot again. It happened right in 
front of Rachel's eyes and, much to his annoyance, she reacted to the 
transformation by clapping her hands with delight and saying, "Oh, do it again! 
Do it again!"
"I never did like elves," grumbled the champerpot sourly.
"Quiet, Brian," Brewster said. "I need to think." He scratched his head and 
frowned. "Okay, so the fairies saw three brigands loading up my missing magic 
chariot into a cart. From your description, it couldn't be anything else. Also, 
from your description, those brigands sound suspiciously like Long Bill, Fifer 
Bob, and Silent Fred. And then they took it to this wizard? What I don't 
understand is, why didn't they say anything about it?"
"Simple," the chamberpot replied. "They sold it to Blackrune 4 and they were 
afraid to say anything about it, for fear of what you might do to them."
"But they hadn't even met me then, and they had no way of knowing what it was," 
said Brewster. "Why couldn't they have simply come to me and explained what 
happened? I would have understood."
"Perhaps," the chamberpot replied, "but 'tis doubtful that Black Shannon would."
"What does she have to do with it?" asked Brewster.
"She has everything to do with it," the chamberpot replied. "Knowing how devious 
these brigands are, they probably cheated her out of her cut. They most likely 
sold your magic chariot and kept all the profits to themselves."
"I'll have to have a word with them," said Brewster.
"Let Shannon have a word with them," the chamberpot replied. "That ought to be 
interesting to watch."
"Well, the question now is where can we find this wizard... what was his name 
again?" asked Brewster.
"Blackrune 4," said Rachel. "He's not much of a wizard, really. Strictly 
second-rate. He lives by himself in a small cottage, with only one apprentice, 
about four days travel north."
"Or at least he did," said Rory.
They glanced at him and saw several fairies buzzing around his head.
"These fairies tell me Blackrune 4 has disappeared," said Rory. "There has been 
no sign of him around his cottage and some time ago, his young apprentice was 
seen leaving in a loaded cart, heading down the road toward Pittsburgh."
"Pittsburgh?" Brewster said.
"Aye," said the chamberpot. " 'Tis the capital of the Kingdom of Pitt, ruled by 
Bonnie King Billy. One of the largest cities in the twenty-seven kingdoms. And 
if Blackrune has vanished and his apprentice has departed, then it sounds as if 
the old wizard may have taken a journey in your magic chariot."
Brewster sighed with resignation. "Then I guess that's it," he said in a dull 
voice. "It means I'm stuck here for the rest of my life."
Shannon and MacGregor lay in bed, with their arms around each other, holding 
each other close. It was past noon, but they had slept late and then spent the 
late morning doing much the same thing that they'd done all through the night 
before, and now they lay basking in the afterglow of passion, simply staring 
into one another's eyes.
"I love you, Shannon," said MacGregor.
She smiled. "You needn't say that," she replied.
" Tis true," he said.
"You barely even know me," she said. "All you remember is a thin ragamuffin of a 
street urchin that your father took in, and you see the woman I've become, but 
you know nothing of all the years that passed between."
"Well, that is not entirely true," replied MacGregor with a smile. "You have 
quite a reputation, you know."
"As do you," she said. "As for my own reputation, 'tis not one that most women 
would be proud of. I know what they say about me."
"Doubtless 'tis much exaggerated, as are many of the things they say of me," 
replied MacGregor.
"I fear not, Mac," said Shannon. "Everything they say of me is true. I am a 
wanton, lustful woman."
"Aye, I know," said MacGregor with a grin.
"Nor are you the first man I have been wanton and lustful with," Shannon added. 
"Nor the second, nor the third, nor even the one hundredth."
MacGregor raised his eyebrows. "That many?"
"Aye, and more," she said. "More than I could count, I fear. I would not wish to 
deceive you about my past. 'Tis quite a scarlet one."
"Well, I am no monk, myself," MacGregor said with a shrug. He chuckled. "My, 
aren't we a pair? An assassin and a brigand queen. 'Tis the stuff that songs are 
made of."
"Hardly songs that one would sing in polite company," said Shannon.
"Those are the best kind," replied Mac with a grin. "I have never met a woman 
like you. You handle a blade like a demon. By the gods, you would have made my 
father proud! And in bed, you are the very essence of a woman, a sweet and 
gentle lover..."
"At times not quite so sweet and gentle," she reminded him.
"Aye, 'tis true," admitted Mac. "I shall require some salve to apply upon by 
back." He shifted slightly and grunted with discomfort.
"Oh, forgive me!" she said. "I did not mean to hurt you."
"Ah, but it was such delicious pain!"
"I will go and fetch some salve from Mary for you," she said, and started to get 
out of bed, but Mac grabbed her and pulled her back.
"Oh, no, you don't! You stay right here by me. I've been hurt far worse, you 
know."
"I know," she said, running her fingertips across his scars. "So many times, 
too."
"You've never been scarred yourself, though."
She shrugged. " Tis merely skill," she said.
"Skill that I am lacking in, I take it?" said MacGregor.
She shrugged again. " Twas not I who lost the fight."
"You needn't rub it in. Aye, I lost the fight," he replied, "but then I gained a 
wench."
"Did you, indeed? Am I some prize to be possessed?"
"A rare and wondrous prize," he said. "But not one to be possessed by any man, 
no. Tis a prize valued all the more highly because 'twas given freely."
"Even if the prize was given out so many times before?" she asked.
MacGregor shook his head. "Nay, not like this, my love. You never gave, you 
took. As did I, myself. With us, 'twas different, and you know it. We each gave 
of each other, willingly, and joyfully, and with no reservations. We were meant 
for one another, you and I. We are two of a kind."
"Your speech is pretty," she said, "and it falls sweetly on my ears, yet it 
smacks uneasily of permanence."
"And would that be so bad a thing?"
" 'Tis not whether 'twould be bad or good," she said, "but whether 'twould be 
possible. I will not change, Mac. I cannot change. I am who I am and what I am. 
'Tis the brigand's life for me, Mac. 'Tis the life I know and love, a life of 
freedom, where I can be the equal, nay, more than equal of any man. And I shall 
not alter it for anyone, not even for you."
"I did not ask that you change," he said.
"And what of yourself?" she asked. "You have made a life for yourself as an 
assassin, the most accomplished assassin of them all. Men step aside for you, 
and you step aside for no one. Your trade is plied in the thriving cities of the 
twenty-seven kingdoms, where your name is known and feared and people treat you 
with respect. The tavern keepers set aside their finest tables for you, and you 
drink their finest wine, and women vie for your attention."
MacGregor shrugged. "It's a living," he said.
"Look around you, Mac," she said. "Look at this room. 'Tis old and dusty and the 
floorboards creak from looseness. Spiders build their webs in the corners at the 
ceiling and mice scuttle in the walls. The bedclothes are threadbare and the 
walls are drafty. And these are the finest accommodations this little hovel of a 
village has to offer. Yet this is where I live, Mac, and for all its shabbiness, 
I love it. This is where I belong, here with my brigand band. 'Twould be a 
paltry living here for the famous Mac the Knife."
"Oh, I don't know," said Mac. "There is much to be said for the simple life of a 
small village. 'Tis true that a city offers many comforts and interesting 
diversions, and yet life in a large city has its drawbacks, too. There is the 
expense, for one thing. One has to pay for the best accommodations, and for 
dining in the finest taverns, and the costs of such things as weapons and 
supplies are greater. It does cut into one's profits."
"True," said Shannon hopefully.
"And then there are all the people," Mac continued. "One of the disadvantages of 
fame is that one's face is often recognized, and far more people know you than 
you can know yourself. At all times, a man in my position has to watch his back. 
There is never any shortage of young hellions who would try to make a name for 
themselves by sneaking up behind me and planting a knife between my shoulder 
blades. In a place such as Brigand's Roost, 'twould not take very long before I 
knew each and every person in the village, and within a short time, I would no 
longer be merely a famous man among a horde of strangers, but a friend among 
friends. And friends watch one another's backs."
"Aye, the people here look out for one another," Shannon said.
"If a stranger were to come to town," continued Mac, "why, I would hear of it at 
once, and no potential foe could enjoy the advantage of surprise. And if some 
wealthy client wished to employ my services, they could send some emissary to 
seek me out in Brigand's Roost and we could conduct negotiations in the security 
of a place I could feel safe in. Nor would my presence here be entirely without 
benefit to Brigand's Roost, I think. There are always those who like to brush up 
against fame, to meet someone whose life might seem more fascinating than their 
own, in the hope that some of that special magic might rub off on them. People 
would come to Brigand's Roost in the hope of meeting Mac the Knife, and perhaps 
buying him a drink at One-Eyed Jack's, and listening to his tales. And there are 
always those who seek me out in the hope that I might take them on as my 
apprentices and train them. I am always being sought out by young and eager 
aspirants to the Footpads and Assassins Guild. Some of them are fools, of 
course, but there are also those who have potential. I have had to turn down 
many of them, simply because I did not have the time. However, I am not getting 
any younger, and I am growing weary of stalking victims throughout the 
twenty-seven kingdoms. Of late, I have been thinking that it might be nice to 
start a school. An academy to train fighters and assassins. 'Twould be the first 
of its kind, you know. And there is much to be said for retiring at the peak of 
one's profession."
Shannon stared at him, her eyes shining. "You would do all that for me?" she 
said with disbelief.
"Nay, for us," said Mac. "I have known many a wench, my lass. Some I have known 
for but one night, while others I have known for years, and yet the very moment 
I crossed swords with you, I knew you were the one for me. I said to myself, 
MacGregor, if this girl doesn't kill you, you'd damn well better marry her."
Shannon caught her breath. "Mac! Do you know what you're saying?"
"Aye, my love, I do. I've nary a doubt in my mind, nor in my heart. What say 
you? Will you join your fate to mine?"
The expression on Shannon's face was a mixture of concern and happiness. "Think, 
Mac," she said. "Are you quite certain 'tis not the passion of the moment 
speaking? I am no little wife to stay at home to sweep the floors and scrub the 
pots. And I have never given any thought to having children. For all I know, I 
may be barren. I have had many lovers, and yet I have never been with child. And 
my men depend upon me. 'Tis not only my own welfare I must think of, but theirs, 
too. I also have a price upon my head. I should think that I would be the last 
woman you would consider taking for a wife."
MacGregor smiled. "I want you for what you are, Shannon," he said, "not for what 
I think you might become. If I need to have my doublet mended, I shall seek out 
a tailor or a seamstress, and if I want someone to stay at home and prepare my 
favorite meals, why, I shall hire a cook. Tis what I have always done. I need no 
wife for that. But a friend and lover who can not only share my bed, but watch 
my back and stand shoulder to shoulder with me against adversity, the skill of 
her blade matched with mine, now there's a wife! As for children," he added with 
a shrug, " 'tis no great matter. If a child should come along, then think of 
what a bold and handsome son or daughter 'twould be. And if not, then I can 
lavish my fatherly affections on those three louts apprenticed to me, and on all 
those who will follow when I start my school. Those awful urchins running wild 
through the streets would make fine pupils. 'Twould give them an outlet and 
direction for all their youthful energies. And 'twould give me a sense of 
purpose to pass on what I have learned. So, once again, what say you, Shannon?"
Her eyes began to mist up. "If you truly want me, Sean MacGregor, then I am 
yours, body and soul."
He reached for her, but she quickly turned away.
He frowned. "Shannon, what is it?"
"Nothing," she mumbled through her tears.
He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. "You're crying?" he 
said.
"I am not!" she said, the tears running freely down her cheeks. "Damn you, Sean 
MacGregor, if you ever tell a soul you've seen me cry, I'll cut your tongue 
out!"
He threw back his head and laughed. "Such sweet endearments from my wife-to-be!"
She drew back her fist to strike him, but he caught her arm and pressed her to 
him, kissing her. She struggled for a moment, and then her arms went around his 
shoulders and she kissed him back with equal fervor. .
Ahem... now, I realize that there are some narrators out there who would, at 
this point, spend pages and pages of colorful, descriptive, lurid prose 
detailing what went on from there, but your faithful narrator believes that true 
romance lies not in graphic description of intimate relationships, but in gentle 
hints and subtle character development and the imagination of the reader. If 
that makes me a prude, so be it. If you want throbbing, quivering loins and 
heaving bosoms and heavy breathing, then go read Jackie Collins. This is not 
that kind of story. What we're going to do at this point is employ a narrative 
technique we've already encountered several times before. It's called a space 
break, and it's normally used for either cutting to another scene or indicating 
that some time has passed. After all, if you were Mac or Shannon, you wouldn't 
want an audience, would you? Well, all right, maybe some of you would, but I 
don't want to know about it. Okay, you ready? Here we go....
Later that afternoon (never mind how much later), Mac and Shannon sat downstairs 
in the tavern, enjoying a late and hearty brunch and making plans. Shannon 
wanted a big wedding and a feast, with all the brigands and all the residents of 
Brigand's Roost and the surrounding farms in attendance, and with Dirty Mary and 
her fancy girls acting as bridesmaids. Mac decided that he would break with 
tradition and have three best men, Hugh, Dugh, and Lugh, assuming they came to 
in time for the ceremony. It was all happening so fast, and they were so caught 
up in their enthusiasm, that it was a while before Mac finally remembered that 
he still had a job that he had left unfinished.
"There is but one thing, my love," he said, "merely one small matter that I 
still have to attend to before we can proceed with our new life together. I hope 
that you will understand, but I do have a client for whom I have a job to do, 
and I have never left a task unfinished."
"I understand, of course," Shannon replied. "How long do you think this task 
will take?"
"Not long," said Mac. "The trail is getting very warm. I should have it all 
wrapped up in a matter of a few days, at the very most."
"You are stalking someone, then," she said.
"Aye, three men," he said. "Their trail has led me here, to Brigand's Roost."
"Here?" said Shannon. "Who are these three men?"
"I do not know their names," said Mac, "but I do know that one is tall, with a 
long face and dark hair; one is of medium height, a bit stout and balding, with 
a fringe of light-brown hair; and one is slim, with dark-red hair and a beard, 
and it seems he only rarely speaks. I also know that they play chess, for one of 
them has lost a game piece." He reached into his pouch. "This little wooden 
knight."
Shannon's eyes narrowed as she saw the chesspiece. "Why does your client want 
these men assassinated?"
"He doesn't," replied Mac. "He wishes them captured and brought to him, so that 
he might question them about some sort of mysterious, magical apparatus."
"What kind of apparatus?" Shannon asked.
"In truth, I do not know," said Mac. "I have never seen it. But it must be 
mysterious and powerful indeed if it baffles even Warrick the White."
"Warrick Morgannan is your client?"
"Aye. He keeps me on retainer, for certain special tasks. He has been a good 
patron, and 'twould be wrong of me to leave this last job for him unfinished."
"I do not quite understand," said Shannon. "If this magical apparatus is so 
mysterious that even Warrick cannot comprehend it, then what makes him think 
these three men can explain it to him?"
"Ah, well, chances are that they cannot," said Mac, "because my guess is that 
they stole it. They had sold it to a sorcerer named Blackrune 4, who lives not 
far from these parts, and who disappeared mysteriously after this apparatus came 
into his possession. His apprentice then brought the device to Warrick, and 
Warrick believes these three men who sold it to Blackrune 4 can tell him where 
it came from."
"They sold it, eh?" said Shannon with an edge to her voice.
"Aye," said Mac. "Ill-gotten gains, no doubt. And 'twill bring them more trouble 
than they bargained for." - "You can be sure of that," said Shannon tersely. 
"Come on!"
She pushed her bench back so hard that it crashed to the floor.
"Where are we going?" Mac asked.
"To have a little talk with those three men you're seeking," she replied.
"You know them?"
"Aye, I know them. They are three of my own men! And 'tis not you nor Warrick 
Morgannan they'll need to fear, but me!"
Mac hurried to catch up with her as she went outside and vaulted up into Big 
Nasty's hand-tooled, silver-trimmed, black leather saddle. He mounted his own 
horse and took off at a gallop after her as she thundered off down the road 
leading out of town, toward Brewster's keep.
It was all that he could do to keep her in sight as he rode, for his own steed 
could barely keep pace with the big black stallion, much less catch him, and 
Shannon rode with a determined fury, using her quirt to urge the stallion on.
They left the town behind and followed the trail as it wound through the forest, 
their horses' hooves digging up large divots from the ground.
"Shannon! Wait!" MacGregor called, but there was no stopping her.
Within a short while, they turned a bend in the trail and came out into a large 
clearing, and MacGregor saw the tower of the keep looming up ahead. He also 
noticed what appeared to be a busy campsite within the crumbling remnants of the 
outer walls. There were several fires burning, and large cauldrons boiling, and 
people working at a variety of tasks.
Shannon went thundering across the clearing, heedless of anyone who stood in her 
way. People scattered at her approach as she galloped through the camp, and Mac 
saw her head turning quickly from side to side, as if she were searching for 
someone. And then the quarry was apparently spotted, because Mac saw her yank 
hard on the reins and turn the stallion, and one man, of medium height, a little 
stout and balding, carrying a couple of buckets on a yoke, froze in his tracks 
as he saw her riding down upon him. Then a look of utter terror crossed his face 
as he dropped the yoke and took to his heels, running like a man possessed.
Fifer Bob ran panic-stricken around one of the fires, where a large spam-fat 
rendering cauldron was boiling, and headed for the keep. Shannon's stallion 
leaped right over the cauldron and the pot, scattering the brigands who were 
tending it, and she pursued the running brigand, apparently intent on running 
him down. Fifer Bob barely made it to the doors. He flung them open and plunged 
through, but Shannon didn't even slow down as she rode in right after him.
As Bob ran screaming through the great hall of the keep, Shannon leaned down 
from her saddle and snagged the back of his collar, forcing his legs to pump 
insanely as she ran him at an even greater speed straight toward one of the 
support pillars. Mac had reined in just outside and dismounted, and he came 
running in just in time to hear Bob's scream as Shannon ran him full tilt right 
into the stone pillar. The sound made as Bob connected was not unlike that of a 
hammer striking meat, and he collapsed senseless and bloody to the floor.
Shannon reined in and wheeled her horse around, the stallion's hooves slipping 
on the stone floor, and as the crowd from outside came running in to see what 
was going on, she rode toward them, her eyes flashing.
"Long Bill!" she shouted. "Silent Fred! Where the devil are you two? Step 
forward!"
She spotted Silent Fred, who realized the threat too late and tried to lose 
himself back in the crowd.
"Oh, no, you don't!" she said, dismounting and covering the distance between 
them in a few quick strides. As he turned to run, she grabbed him by his hair 
and yanked him back. "I'll have a word or two with you, my bucko, and I'll not 
sit still for any of your silence! Where is Long Bill?"
There was the sound of running footsteps as Long Bill tried to make good his 
escape outside.
"Bill, you cur! Get back here!" Shannon shouted as the crowd parted hastily.
"Allow me, my love," said Mac, stepping up beside her, and if the brigands were 
surprised at the familiarity of his address, they were even more surprised when 
the handsome stranger reached up and drew one of his many knives from his 
crossed leather bandoliers, deftly flicked it around to hold it by the point, 
then stepped up to the doorway and threw it at the rapidly retreating back of 
Long Bill.
The knife spun end over end through the air on its unerring path and struck Long 
Bill hilt-first, squarely in the back of his head. He took two more running 
steps and fell to the ground, stunned.
"I assume you did not want him injured," Mac said, turning deferentially to 
Shannon.
"Not yet, I don't," she said through clenched teeth, still holding on to Silent 
Fred by a fistful of his hair. "Bloody Bob, go fetch him."
"Aye, Shannon," Bloody Bob said, and he trotted out to where Long Bill was 
lying, groaning, on the ground. He picked him up with one hand and slung him 
over his shoulder, as if he didn't weigh a thing, then carried him back inside 
the keep and deposited him none too gently on the floor at Shannon's feet.
"Right," said Shannon. "Help him up and bring him."
Two of the brigands supported Long Bill with his arms across their shoulders, 
following as Shannon dragged Silent Fred along to one of the wooden tables in 
the hall. She glanced down at the senseless form of Fifer Bob as she passed him 
and snapped, "Revive that worthless baggage!"
Red Jack and Juicy Jill went to fetch a pail of water and when they brought it 
back, they poured it over Fifer Bob, whose crown was not quite broken, though it 
was bashed up pretty badly.
"Sit them down," said Shannon, shoving Silent Fred toward one of the wooden 
benches. Long Bill was deposited on the bench beside him, and Fifer Bob, still 
stunned, was propped up against Long Bill. The other brigands gathered round.
Shannon stood back, her hands on her hips, looking down at them with a steely 
gaze. Mac came up to stand beside her. The other brigands still did not know who 
he was, and they were almost as curious about him as they were about what their 
three friends had done to bring down Shannon's wrath.
"Our articles state that we share all plundered booty equally," said Shannon. 
"We all agreed to that, did we not?"
Silence.
"Well?"
There was a hasty chorus of agreement from the others. Fifer Bob groaned and 
held his head. Long Bill made a quiet, moaning sound, and Silent Fred turned 
pale.
"Share and share alike, we said," Shannon went on. "What profits one shall 
profit all. A brotherhood of brigands, supporting one another, with no one 
holding out in greed, for 'twould be no greed among us. Was that not what was 
agreed?"
This time, the chorus of agreement came more quickly.
"And what punishment did we decide upon for anyone who broke with the articles 
we all agreed on?" she asked.
No one spoke.
"Well?" she snapped.
Lonesome John softly cleared his throat. "Uh... begging your pardon, Shannon, 
but I do not believe that a specific penalty was ever mentioned."
"Aye," said Pikestaff Pat. " 'A punishment most vile,' was what I think you 
said."
"Aye, 'a punishment most vile,'" several of the others echoed, and Fifer Bob 
began to whimper.
"Oh," said Shannon, remembering. " Tis right, I meant to keep my options open. 
Well, we shall have to decide upon a vile punishment, for these three good 
comrades of ours have broken with our articles and held back profits for 
themselves!"
"What?"
"No!"
"They didn't!"
"Aye, they did, indeed," said Shannon. "They conspired to engage in selling 
stolen goods and kept the profits all to themselves, cheating the rest of us of 
our fair share!"
"Flog 'em!"
"String 'em up!"
"Boil 'em in oil!"
"Off with their heads!"
"Give 'em a right nasty scolding!"
Shannon turned around, "Who said that?" she demanded, but the culprit who spoke 
last wisely refrained from identifying himself.
" 'Twasn't what you think," said Silent Fred, moved to speech by the imminent 
danger of his situation. " 'Twasn't really plunder, 'twas something that we 
found!"
"Aye," said Long Bill. "We found it in the road, whilst we were lurking in the 
hedgerows. It fell out of the sky! We didn't steal it, so we thought it didn't 
count. We merely found it!"
"Finders keepers," mumbled Fifer Bob.
"I'll bloody well give you finders keepers!" Shannon said, drawing back her 
fist.
Fifer Bob hastily covered his head with his arms and whined, "Don't hit! Don't 
hit!"
"What's going on?" said Brewster, coming down the stairs from his bedroom on the 
upper floor, where he had spent most of the day in deep depression.
"Unless I miss my guess," said Shannon, "these three curs found your missing 
magic chariot, then sold it, and kept quiet about it all this time."
"Oh," said Brewster. "Yes, I know. I've been meaning to talk to them about it."
Shannon's eyes widened in astonishment. "You knew?"
"Well, actually, I only just found out about it. Rachel told me, and then Rory's 
fairies filled in the rest of the details."
"Rachel?" Shannon said with a puzzled frown. "And who is Rachel?"
In answer, there came a rapid tattoo on a pair of bongo drums and everyone 
looked up to see Rachel Drum sitting on the railing up above them, watching the 
proceedings from the gallery on the second floor.
"Hey," she said, and gave them all a jaunty wave.
"An elf!" said Bloody Bob.
"Give that man a prize," said Rachel.
"What is that elf doing there?" asked Shannon.
"Sitting," Rachel said. "Do go on. Don't stop on my account. It was beginning to 
get interesting."
"Rachel heard that there was a reward for information about my missing magic 
chariot," Brewster explained, "and she came to bring me news of it. If seems 
some of the fairies saw Fred, Bill, and Bob loading it up into a cart and taking 
it to Blackrune 4. But they really shouldn't be blamed. They had no way of 
knowing what it was. They hadn't even met me yet, so how could they have known 
that it was mine?"
"Aye, we didn't know!" said Long Bill, seeing a ray of hope for a reprieve.
" 'Tis not the point," said Shannon. "Whether you found booty or you stole it 
makes no difference. You sold it and then you kept all the profits for 
yourselves, in violation of our articles!"
"But there were no profits!" Silent Fred said. "We were cheated!"
"Aye," said Long Bill. "The wizard was a trickster and paid us off in changeling 
money! We would have shared it with the rest of you, only it turned to acorns by 
the time that we returned, and we said nothing for fear of being mocked for 
being so taken in."
Shannon looked dubious. "Perhaps you may be telling the truth," she said. "Yet 
even so, you knew that Doc was searching for his missing magic chariot, yet you 
said nothing of it. Why?"
"Because we were afraid," said Long Bill. "We knew Doc was a mighty sorcerer and 
we feared his wrath if he discovered what we'd done, even though 'twas done in 
innocence. I swear it, Doc, we didn't know 'twas your magic chariot, honest!"
"Aye," said Silent Fred. "We had no idea! We took it to Blackrune 4 because we 
thought that he might know!"
"How do I know you're telling us the truth?" asked Shannon. "You'd all three lie 
to save your skins!"
"It really makes no difference, Shannon," Brewster said. "The fairies say that 
Blackrune 4 has disappeared without a trace. He must have managed to activate 
the machine somehow, and now both he and it are gone. I'll never find it, and 
now I'll never get back home."
"Perhaps not," said Mac. " Tis true that Blackrune 4 has disappeared without a 
trace, but this magic chariot of yours, whatever it may be, may not have 
vanished along with him. 'Tis possible that I might know where it would be."
"Who are you?" said Brewster, noticing his unfamiliar presence for the first 
time.
"The name is Sean MacGregor."
"Mac the Knife!" said someone, and the name was repeated in hushed tones among 
the crowd.
"Forgive me," said Shannon. "In my anger at these three louts, I had forgotten 
my manners. Mac, meet Brewster Doc, a mighty wizard from the Land of Ing. 
Brewster Doc, meet Sean MacGregor, the Bladesman, also known as Mac the Knife, 
the number-one-ranked assassin in the Footpads and Assassins Guild, and the man 
who is to be my husband."
In the stunned silence brought on by this announcement, Brewster stepped forward 
to shake Mac's hand and say, "Congratulations. I hope you'll both be very happy. 
But.... excuse me, I'm not really certain if I heard correctly. Did Shannon say 
that you were an... assassin?"
"Aye," said Mac. "But I have decided to retire and start a school in Brigand's 
Roost."
"Ah," said Brewster. "I see. Well, teaching is a noble profession. But what 
exactly did you mean when you said that you might know where my machine... my, 
uh, magic chariot might be?"
"I was hired to find these three," said Mac, indicating Silent Fred, Long Bill, 
and Fifer Bob, "because they brought some sort of magical apparatus to Blackrune 
4, whose apprentice then brought it to my client. My client wished to find these 
three, so that they might tell him where they got it, and who made it. I take it 
then 'twas you?"
"Yes!" said Brewster excitedly. "Then it's still here? Your client has it?"
"Aye, 'twould seem so," replied MacGregor. "Tell me, this magic chariot of 
yours, can it make people disappear?"
"Well... yes, I suppose you could put it that way," Brewster said. "But if 
someone were to activate it, it would disappear along with them, to another 
place and tune."
"Indeed?" MacGregor said. "And is there no way to work the spell so that 'twould 
make people disappear, but not disappear along with them itself?"
Brewster frowned. "I... I'm not really sure. I shouldn't think so. At least, not 
if it was operated properly. I can't really see how it would work that way."
"Supposing the means of operation employed were not the proper means," said Mac 
with a thoughtful expression, "but that some other spell was found to make it 
work, perhaps not the correct one that you intended, but one that would somehow 
make it function just the same. What then?"
"A spell?" said Brewster, frowning. "A spell...."
"My client is a mighty sorcerer as well," said Mac. "He is Warrick the White, 
the Grand Director of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, and there have been many 
rumors about that he has been making people disappear without a trace, though no 
one knows how or why. He is the most powerful sorcerer in all the twenty-seven 
kingdoms, but if this magic chariot of yours is the mysterious apparatus he has 
in his possession, then its magic baffles even him, and 'tis you he's seeking so 
that he might learn its secret."
"A spell..." said Brewster. "Is it possible? Using magic to... yes, well, in 
this universe, perhaps it could be... if the energy field could be activated 
by... I don't know. Could it? Well, if it could, then ... there would be no way 
to predict how the field would.... Good Lord!"
"I fear I do not understand," said Mac with a puzzled frown as the others all 
listened, fascinated.
"This is terrible!" said Brewster. "If my machine is being used to transport 
people, and it somehow does so without being transported itself, then there's no 
way for those poor people to get back, and there's no way of telling where 
they've gone!"
"Then 'tis possible that it could work that way?" asked Mac.
"I don't know," said Brewster. "I suppose it could be possible, but it was never 
designed to be operated by... there's no telling what could.... Good God, if 
that's what's happening, we've got to get it back at once!"
"Hold on, now," said MacGregor. "If Warrick has your magic chariot, then rest 
assured that he shall not simply give it up. Nor will he sell it. This apparatus 
is clearly a source of some great power, and Warrick will not rest until he has 
deciphered the mystery behind it. He has offered a prize bounty for these three, 
so that he might find out where it came from, and track down its creator. He 
took great pains to impress me with the importance of this task."
"I see," said Brewster. "So then you've come for me, is that it?"
" Twas these three brigands that I was hired to find," MacGregor said, "but 
undoubtedly 'tis you that Warrick seeks."
Shannon quickly stepped between them. "Stop!" she said. "I see well where this 
is headed, and 'twill bode ill for everyone. Mac, none here would question your 
skill or reputation, but if you tried to pit your skills against a sorcerer like 
Doc, you would not last an instant. 'Twould be sheer folly."
"Aye," said Bloody Bob, "and Doc here is a friend of ours, as are Silent Fred, 
Long Bill, and Fifer Bob, for all their devious ways. We would not stand by idle 
if anyone made an attempt to apprehend them."
There was a strong chorus of "ayes," for which Brewster felt extremely grateful, 
for he'd been eyeing all of Sean MacGregor's blades uneasily and he had no 
illusions as to just how well his "powers" would stack up against MacGregor's. 
Silent Fred, Long Bill, and Fifer Bob also looked enormously relieved, for it 
seemed that the situation had now escalated and they were no longer the central 
objects of everyone's concern. It was just possible, they thought, that they 
might skate on this one.
"Doc," continued Shannon, "for your part, no one here doubts the extent of your 
abilities, but if you were to strike out against Mac, you would be striking out 
against the man I love, and worse still, you would incur the wrath of Warrick 
Morgannan, who is not only the most powerful wizard in all the twenty-seven 
kingdoms, but the Grand Director of his Guild, as well. All the other wizards in 
the Guild would doubtless stand behind him, and no matter how powerful you are, 
one mage against a hundred would be stiff odds for anyone to contemplate. There 
has to be another way to handle this dilemma, and we shall all have to put our 
heads together to come up with a solution to this problem."
"That sounds reasonable to me," said Brewster, thinking that going up against a 
hundred wizards would not only be stiff odds, it would be suicide.
"Aye," said Mac. "While a part of me would feel poorly at leaving my last 
contract unfulfilled, a greater part of me would have no wish to end my life in 
one grand and foolish gesture. Especially now. that I have so much more to live 
for."
The look that passed between him and Shannon was not lost on any of the 
brigands, whose curiosity about how all this could have happened so quickly and 
without their knowledge was offset only by their anxiety as to how this 
potentially dangerous situation would be resolved.
"We shall have to hold a council," Shannon said, "and decide with care how best 
to proceed."
"But at least the good news is that I haven't lost my magic chariot," said 
Brewster. "It's still here."
"Aye, but 'tis in the hands of Warrick Morgannan," Shannon said, "and retrieving 
it from him will be no simple task."
"There's got to be a way," said Brewster. "Maybe we can talk to him. I'm sure 
he's a reasonable man."
"Warrick the White?" said Rachel, from upstairs. She gave a derisive snort. "I'd 
sooner reason with a rabid unicorn."
 
CHAPTER TEN
 
While Brewster and the others were busy contemplating their current awkward 
situation, Mick O'Fallon and Robie McMurphy were busy at the cottage, finalizing 
their business arrangements with Harlan the Peddlar. From the blades already 
finished during their first production run, they had assembled a dozen more 
finished knives with grips of polished nickallirium, which meant that some of 
them would have to wait for the next production run to get their own personal 
knives, but business was business, after all. This was their first chance to 
make a profit from all the work they'd done and Harlan the Peddlar would get 
first crack at their inventory.
They agreed upon a selling price for the knives, which would be expensive, but 
still not so costly that they'd be priced out of the market. Harlan wrapped them 
carefully and said he'd make arrangements to get special wooden cases made up 
for them when he returned to Pittsburgh, so that it would make a better 
presentation. He also picked up a supply of magic soap, in bars, which he said 
he'd sell in little leather bags he'd have made up, in various colors, under the 
name of Doc's Magic Dirt Remover, since he felt that the name "soap" sounded 
confusing and lacked a certain flair. They all agreed upon the terms for that, 
as well.
Next, Harlan spent some time sampling Jane's herbal teas, all except for the 
hallucinogenic ones, which Mick and Robie advised him to take on consignment, 
but refrain from sampling until he was safely home.
"Trust me," Mick told Harlan, "you'll not want to be on the road alone when this 
devilish stuff kicks in. There's no telling what you're liable to be seeing."
"Will it be bad?" asked Harlan with a frown.
"Difficult to tell for certain," Mick replied. "A great deal depends upon how 
much you drink, and upon your state of mind. Most of us have seen pleasant and 
euphoric visions, but a few have seen flocks of miniature dragons with great big 
bloody fangs and such. Swarms of little fairies with the heads of spiders, 
carnivorous strawberries-"
"Carnivorous strawberries?" Harlan said.
"Aye, well that was Saucy Cheryl," Robie said. "She's always been a mite 
peculiar."
"Well, I shall take these on consignment then, and sell them as a mystical, 
visionary potion to be imbibed at one's own risk," said Harlan. " Twould be best 
if we could come up with a name for all these teas, though."
"But each brew has its own name," Robie said.
"Aye, but I meant for all the brews together," Harlan said. "So that the buyers 
will know to ask for different brews, but under the same trade name."
"How about Calamity Jane's Visionary Teas?" asked Mick.
"Nay, it lacks a certain something," replied the peddlar. He thought about it 
for a moment. "Ah! I have it! Celestial Steepings!"
"Celestial Steepings Visionary Teas," Robie said.
"I like it," Harlan said. "We are agreed, then. I'll take two dozen boxes of 
each."
"Excellent," said Mick. "Well, that gives us a good sampling of commodities to 
deal in, and they are all unique commodities, that no one else will have to 
offer, which is just what you were searching for."
"Aye," said Harlan. "My friends, I think that this could be the beginning of a 
beautiful relationship."
"A highly profitable one, let's hope," McMurphy said.
"I have little doubt of that," said Harlan. "In fact, I am so enthused about 
these products that I am anxious to load up and hit the road, so that I might 
start developing our market with all speed."
They helped him load up the products in his cart, and Harlan gracefully declined 
to have one for the road, so they toasted the success of their new venture with 
herbal tea, instead.
"I shall return for more as soon as I have sold this lot," said Harlan. "And I 
do not think 'twill take long, so best not be idle while I'm gone. I have no 
doubt but that I shall return with many orders."
"Good," said Mick. "Then we shall begin our production at full pace. Good luck 
to you, Harlan."
"To all of us," said Harlan, "though with commodities as rare as these, I do not 
think that we shall need it. You mark my words, my friends, for we shall all be 
rich before too long!"
And with that, he whipped up his horse and set off back down the road to 
Brigand's Roost, and from there, toward Pittsburgh. On the way, he whistled 
happily, and sang songs to himself, for he was certain that his fortunes were 
about to undergo a quite dramatic turn. Just how dramatic, he had no way of 
knowing, but that's getting way ahead of the story.
He passed through Brigand's Roost without bothering to stop, and in fact, he 
whipped up his horse and galloped through, for he was pursued all the way 
through town by the Awful Urchin Gang, who jeered and pelted him with dirt 
clods. Among them, he saw three youngsters who appeared to be quite large for 
their age, and whose aim with their dirt clods was uncomfortably accurate.
"Rotten little troglodytes!" he shouted. "Egg-sucking little weasels! Miserable 
spams!"
He managed to elude the Awful Urchin Gang and made it safely out of town, but he 
did not slow down until he was quite certain there was no chance of pursuit. And 
now all he had to worry about were highwaymen and brigands, but with Morey's 
Elixir of Stench at his side, he felt reasonably safe.
"If Morey could find a way to bottle up the stench of those rotten little 
children, then he'd really have something," Harlan mumbled to himself.
He traveled easily, not wishing to tire out his horse, and at the end of the 
first day, he made camp in a little clearing not far off the trail, where he 
built a fire and made sure to burn plenty of the garlic herb, to keep the 
coffee-drinking, beatnik, vampire elves at bay.
"A man can't be too careful," he mumbled to himself. "After all, I've got a lot 
to lose now. Can't take any risks with my new inventory."
The next day, he set off bright and early and made good time, and encountered no 
one on the road. But by the sixth day of his journey, he began to encounter 
people on the road, all traveling in the opposite direction, and all riding in 
carts loaded up with all of their possessions, or pulling wagons or carrying 
overburdened knapsacks on their backs. Their numbers kept increasing, men, 
women, and children, and finally his curiosity got the better of him and he 
stopped to ask a few of them where they were going.
"Anywhere away from Pittsburgh," one of them replied.
"And you'd be wise to turn around yourself and head the other way," another 
said.
"Why?" Harlan asked. "What's wrong with Pittsburgh?"
"Perhaps you haven't heard," another traveler said, "but things have changed in 
Pittsburgh. People have been disappearing, vanishing without a trace."
"Aye," said another, "there have been many new, repressive edicts passed by 
Bloody King Billy, and implemented by his brother, Sheriff Waylon. The taxes 
have been raised and raised again, and now a man could be arrested merely for 
spitting in the road, or scratching himself in public, or breaking wind, or just 
about any little normal thing a body wouldn't think twice about."
"Nor is that the worst of it," another traveler said.
"Once taken to the royal dungeons, one is never seen again."
"The prisoners in the royal dungeons are all brought to Warrick's tower," said 
another, "and rumor has it they're all turned into dwarves so they may work the 
mines."
"Nay, that's an old rumor," said another. "He crushes them up in a big press to 
make an immortality elixir."
"I heard that one last week," another traveler said. "My rumor monger swears he 
has the latest rumors, and he told me Warrick puts a spell on them and turns 
them into gruel to feed the soldiers of the king."
"Ahh, your rumor monger's full of it," another traveler said. "My rumor monger 
has it directly from the royal jailor's second cousin's nephew's friend that 
what Warrick really does is-"
"My friends! My friends!" said Harlan, raising his voice so that he could be 
heard above them. "There is no need to argue. I would be eager to hear all your 
tales. Why not take a respite from your journey so that we might break bread 
around a campfire and discuss these fascinating matters?"
"Aye, sounds like a good idea to me," one of the travelers said. "I've been 
walking for a good long while and I could use a break."
"And I see that you are all tired and dusty from your journey," Harlan said. "In 
fact, I might have just the thing to remedy that situation. I have recently come 
into possession of a most wondrous, magical new product that not only removes 
all dirt and filth, but leaves one feeling invigorated and refreshed,, and 
smelling like a mountain meadow on a fresh spring day."
"Indeed?" asked one of the women in the carts. "I have never heard of such a 
thing. What is it?"
" 'Tis called Doc's Magic Dirt Remover," Harlan said, "and I have just been 
taking it to market, but seeing as how you tell me things are not well in 
Pittsburgh, I am having second thoughts. In fact, I had planned to have this 
special, magical, new product taken to a leathercrafter, so that I might have 
special packaging made up, colorful and handy little drawstring pouches to keep 
the product in, yet since I have not yet had a chance to do so, 'twould be only 
fair if I were to reduce the price I'd planned on selling the Magic Dirt Remover 
for, since I do not yet have pouches for it."
"A pouch is a pouch," the woman said, "but I have never heard of a product that 
magically leaves one fresh and clean. How does it work?"
"Ah, that's the magic to it!" Harlan said. " 'Tis hard for a man to describe its 
miraculous and wondrous properties. 'Tis something that must truly be 
experienced in order to appreciate its worth."
"And to experience this product's worth, one would have to buy it first, I 
suppose," said the woman wryly. "Nay, peddlar, I have heard this sort of pitch 
before."
"No pitch, my good woman, but merely the simple truth," said Harlan with an 
elaborate shrug. "I tell you, with a product as excellent as this one, a peddlar 
needs no pitch. It truly sells itself. In fact, since I am feeling well disposed 
today, and am enjoying the pleasure of your conversation after a long and lonely 
journey on the road, I will make you and you alone this one-time offer... I 
shall give you, my good woman, your very own free sample of Doc's Magic Dirt 
Remover, and you may be the very first among your friends to try it out with no 
risk to yourself. I ask you, what could.be more fair than that?"
The woman's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Free?" she said. "With no cost to me at 
all?"
"Nay, I shall charge you but one smile," Harlan said. "Here 'tis, my lady, your 
very own sample of Doc's Magic Dirt Remover, all for a pleasant look from you."
"Aye, and then I shall need to purchase the instructions for its use," the woman 
said warily.
"Now would I do such a thing?" asked Harlan, looking gravely wounded. "After all 
the trouble you have gone to, telling me about what's been happening in 
Pittsburgh, enlightening a poor, itinerant peddlar purely out of the goodness of 
your heart? Nay, I shall instruct you in its use right here and now, in front of 
all, so that everyone may see that Harlan the Peddlar deals honestly and fairly 
with his customers. You see that small creek, yonder? Well, all it takes to make 
Doc's Magic Dirt Remover work its spell is just a little bit of water. Merely 
water, which may be found in abundance everywhere, for free, and not one thing 
more. All you need to do is strip off your clothing in a discreet location-I am 
sure that several of these fine, strapping fellows here will be glad to stand 
guard with their backs toward you and make certain no one else approaches, as I 
see they are all gentlemen-then wet yourself down and rub the Magic Dirt Remover 
on your skin.
"As you rub, you will begin to notice how it magically turns to foamy lather, 
like the whitecaps on a lake during a windy day, but there's no need to be 
alarmed. 'Tis only the magic doing its work. As it turns to foamy lather on your 
body, all you need do is scrub a bit, and you will find it feels very pleasant. 
Then all you need to do is rinse it off with some more water and all the dirt 
will wash away, leaving you with a feeling of refreshment and invigoration such 
as you have never felt before! And 'tis all entirely safe, you have my solemn 
word on that."
"And you will give me this free sample to try out, with no obligation on my 
part?" the woman said.
"None whatsoever," Harlan said. "There you are, my lady. Your very own free bar 
of Doc's Magic Dirt Remover. Try it and you'll see that everything I claim for 
it is true."
The woman anxiously accepted the bar of soap and hastened to the stream to try 
it out, and while Harlan still had his captive audience, he began to tell them 
of the other wondrous products that he had to sell. A fire was built while they 
rested by the road, and some water was put on the boil, and he brewed up some of 
Calamity Jane's Celestial Steepings Tea, which was enthusiastically received. As 
they drank their tea, he listened to their tales about their journey and what 
was happening in Pittsburgh and how they'd all decided to move out of the city 
in search of a better, safer life, all the while commenting on how delightfully 
the brew smelled and how healthful an effect it was having on him.
The woman he'd given the free sample of soap to returned from her bath down by 
the creek, amazed and full of enthusiasm for the miraculous properties of the 
magical new product. She immediately became the center of attention as she 
regaled everyone with a description of how the Magic Dirt Remover had turned to 
foamy lather, and how wonderful it felt upon her skin, and how with a little bit 
of scrubbing, which felt very smooth and pleasant, all the dirt and dust had 
magically washed away. And, indeed, she did look very clean and had a nice, 
fresh smell about her. Harlan merely sat back and smiled as she sold the product 
for him, and by the time she finished, everyone was clamoring for some Magic 
Dirt Remover of their own. He sold out not only his entire supply of soap, but 
also his entire supply of teas, as well. And then, when he had exhausted all his 
other inventory, he brought out the piece de resistance... the many-bladed 
knife.
When they all saw the grips of polished nickallirium, they marveled. When they 
saw him demonstrate some of its many uses, they were amazed. And when he allowed 
as to how he might be willing to let them go a bit more cheaply than he'd 
planned, because he'd planned to sell them along with specially made cases and 
it would not be fair to sell them at their original price without those cases, 
they all wanted to be the first to take advantage of the special discount.
He only had a dozen knives to sell, and not all the travelers were able to 
afford them, even with the "special discount," but as other travelers saw their 
camp and stopped to see what was going on, his audience increased and he managed 
to sell all twelve of the many-bladed knives, even getting a higher price for 
some of them as people began to bid against one another in an effort to get one 
before his supply had been exhausted. The demand was far greater than the 
supply, so Harlan offered to take orders.
"Understand now," he said, "that no one else will have these knives for sale but 
myself, so if you wish to place your order, you can do so now and pick them up 
in a week's time at the town of Brigand's Roost. And you need not give me a 
deposit now. I am an honest peddlar, and I believe that you are all honest 
individuals, yourselves. I will trust you and I will take your orders and you 
need pay only when you pick them up. And if you should change your minds, well 
then... 'twill be my loss, but then I think that I will have little difficulty 
selling such fine and useful items, so I do not much fear incurring any 
short-term losses."
He sold out his entire inventory and took orders for more tea, more knives, and 
more of Doc's Magic Dirt Remover.
"Just be sure to tell everyone that you got these wondrous, useful items from 
Harlan the Peddlar, and that no one else has them to offer. And if you should 
encounter anyone who wants some of these special items for themselves, why then, 
I would consider giving a special discount to anyone who came to me with orders 
of six or more for any of these items. And for anyone who came to me with a 
dozen orders, why... for such initiative, I would be compelled to reduce the 
price to you still further."
He then asked the travelers where they were going, and some replied to 
Franktown, while others were heading for the Kingdom of Valdez, and still others 
to other kingdoms, but there were more than a few who had not yet decided on 
their final destination.
"This town of Brigand's Roost," asked one of them, "where you may be found in 
one week's time. Do you think there may be work there?"
"Aye, I think there may very well be work, indeed," said Harlan, "for 'tis in 
Brigand's Roost that these very goods are made. Why, only recently, a great and 
powerful wizard from a far-off land took up residence nearby, and 'tis through 
his largesse that these products have now been made available to the general 
public. As of now, 'tis true, Brigand's Roost is but a small village, but as the 
sales of these wondrous new products will increase, the size of the village will 
increase, as well, and there will be new housing, and more work, and a wise man 
could get in on the ground floor of a good opportunity if he were to get in 
early, before the coming boom. As for myself, I must get back to Brigand's Roost 
and place some of these new orders, and replenish my own stock, so I shall leave 
you all to discuss these things amongst yourselves and sleep on it tonight. And 
then, who knows, perhaps I will be seeing you in Brigand's Roost!"
He said goodbye to them and got up in his cart and left them, traveling all 
night long to get a good head start. He had to get back to Brigand's Roost and 
talk to Mick and Robie. He had to see about setting up a real estate office and 
starting a construction firm. Things were going to start happening a lot faster 
than he'd thought, and before anyone started getting in on the ground floor and 
building, Harlan was going to make sure he owned the land.
Colin Hightower stepped out of the elevator and followed the orderly down the 
hall. Like the orderly, he was dressed in a white hospital coat, which the 
orderly had supplied him with because he didn't want him to appear but of place 
inside the institution.
"I hope you know, I'm taking one hell of a risk, doing this," said the orderly, 
a trifle nervously. "The patient's not supposed to have any visitors at all, 
aside from staff and approved visiting physicians. Dr. Shulman would have a fit 
if he found out I'd brought in a reporter. I'm taking one hell of a chance 
here."
"All you have to do is get me in to ask her a few questions and then safely out 
again," said Colin, "and you'll have made a tidy profit on the deal. Easy 
money."
"Not so easy if we get caught," the orderly replied. "But around this time, the 
duty nurse usually goes back in the supply room for a little action with the 
security guard. We should have at least half an hour. You figure that's enough?"
"I guess it'll have to be," said Colin. "Now you're quite sure the patient isn't 
violent?"
"Nah, she isn't violent," the orderly replied. "She keeps trying to come on to 
me so I'll help her to escape, but she's never tried to hurt anybody. She's a 
nice girl, really. Sorta sweet. Damn shame she's so screwed up."
"You said you could get me a copy of her file," Colin said.
"Yeah, I got it right here," the orderly said, ducking into an empty room and 
pulling a large manila envelope out from beneath his coat. "I took a photocopy 
of it, only listen, if you ever tell anybody where you got it, I'll deny it and 
say you tried to bribe me for a copy."
"I did bribe you for a copy," Colin said wryly.
"Yeah, well, just be cool with this, know what I mean? It's my ass that's on the 
line, not yours. I need this job. My girlfriend's driving me straight to the 
poorhouse."
"You have my sympathies," said Colin. "Let's hope your wife doesn't find out."
He opened up the file and scanned it quickly. It was just as he'd expected. It 
was the same story every time. So far, he'd followed up on half a dozen of these 
cases, and each time, no matter how far apart they were, the story was 
disturbingly, inexplicably the same.
None of the people had any idea where they really were. All of them were dressed 
in some bizarre, medieval fashion when they were apprehended, and all of them 
seemed completely baffled by modern technology. They were terrified by 
automobiles and traffic lights, electric signs and trains, skyscrapers and 
asphalt roads, and the noise and stress of modern cities. They all acted as if 
they had never heard a radio or used a telephone or seen a television set 
before. They all claimed it was some kind of sorcery. It was the strangest 
syndrome he had ever heard of.
Even stranger, every single one of them had exhibited an irresistible compulsion 
to return to Pittsburgh, though when questioned about Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 
none of them seemed to have any familiarity with the city and, in at least one 
case, when the individual concerned had actually reached Pittsburgh, he had 
claimed that it wasn't Pittsburgh at all, but some other place, and that the 
Pittsburgh that he came from was nothing like that whatsoever.
They all told the same, surreal story about some kind of mythical city by the 
name of Pittsburgh, located in the Kingdom of Pitt, which was named after 
somebody called Pitt the Plunderer and ruled by a monarch known as Bonnie King 
Billy, though other similar and less flattering versions of the monarch's name 
were often used. When pressed for further details, these patients all told 
remarkably similar stories, about some kind of fantastical, medieval city in a 
land of twenty-seven kingdoms, where magic abounded and mythical creatures 
roamed the forests. And the compulsion to return to that bizarre, medieval, 
fairy-tale world continued unabated in each and every one of them.
Many of the patients were quite violent and had to be either sedated or 
restrained, frequently both. Two of them had actually managed to escape the 
institutions where they were confined, but both had been recaptured. And all of 
them seemed to be held in thrall by some kind of being or entity named Warrick. 
They were terrified of him, or it, and yet they were all driven by a relentless 
compulsion to return to his alabaster tower.
The more Colin found out about this strange phenomenon, the more fascinated he 
became. What was it? Some kind of mass psychosis that struck randomly, in 
isolated cases, located many miles apart? What could be responsible for it? 
Could these people all be the victims of some kind of secret cult? It certainly 
seemed to have bizarre, satanic overtones, with elements of magic and the 
occult, and fantastic, mythical creatures. Colin had never heard of anything 
like it.
"Come on, we're wasting time," the orderly said. "You can look through all that 
later. If you want to see her, we've gotta go in now."
"Okay," Colin said, "let's go."
The orderly checked the halls, then beckoned him forward. They hurried down the 
corridor.
"You're absolutely sure this patient is nonviolent?" said Colin nervously.
"Hey, don't worry about it, man, she wouldn't hurt a fly. She's real simple, you 
know? Sweet, but not too bright. All she does all day is watch TV. The doc had a 
set brought in because she's safe with it and it keeps her quiet. Like I said, 
it's a damn shame. She's a real nice kid."
The orderly opened the door and they went inside the room. It looked like a 
perfectly ordinary hospital room, except for the bars over the special, 
shatterproof windows.
A girl was sitting cross-legged on the bed, dressed in a hospital gown and 
watching television with a wide-eyed expression of utter fascination. She was 
blonde, and fairly pretty in a pouty sort of way,- with a slim, attractive 
figure and green eyes. She looked about seventeen or eighteen years old, but 
there was something very childlike about her.
"Megan, I brought you a visitor," the orderly said.
"A visitor!" the girl said, turning toward them with a beaming smile. "Oh, how 
nice!"
"Now remember, Megan, this has got to be our secret," said the orderly. "You 
know what Dr. Shulman said. No visitors. If you told anyone about this, I'd get 
in a lot of trouble."
"Oh, I won't tell a soul!" said Megan earnestly. " 'Twill be our secret, Andy." 
She gave him a conspiratorial wink.
"Be nice to the man, now," said Andy. He turned to Colin. "I'll keep watch 
outside. If you hear me knockin', you move your ass, you hear?"
"Gotcha," Colin said. He went over to the bed and sat down on the edge. "Hello, 
my name is Colin. And your name is Megan?"
"That's me," she said brightly. " 'Tis nice to be makin' your acquaintance, 
Colin."
"Well, it's very nice to meet you, too, Megan. I understand you come from 
Pittsburgh."
"Oh, yes!" she said. "You know it? No one here seems to know anything about 
Pittsburgh. 'Tis most peculiar. The things they keep telling me about Pittsburgh 
are all wrong. But I do so need to get back! Can you please help me, Colin?"
"Why do you need to get back there, Megan?"
"Oh, because I simply must, that's why! I must get back to Warrick's tower. I 
must tell him where I've been."
"And where have you been?" asked Colin.
"Why, here, of course! 'Tis a most peculiar place! I have never seen such magic. 
Like this magic box here, which unfolds the most miraculous visions! Some .of 
them are frightening, and some are funny, and some I do not understand at all. 
Why do those strangely armored men fight over a small leather ball? And what is 
this winged creature called a Maxipad?"
"I often find those things confusing, myself," said Colin. "Tell me, Megan, do 
you remember how you came here?"
"Men called police brought me," she replied.
"No, I mean before that," Colin said. "How did you leave Pittsburgh?"
She frowned. "They've asked me that before," she said. "I am not really sure. I 
was brought into Warrick the White's sanctorum, in his tower, and there was 
Warrick, and his horrid little troll, and he fastened me into this strange 
device so that I could not move and then he spoke a spell and here I was. Oh, 
but I do need to get back! Won't you help me, Colin, please? I can be nice to 
you. I can be very sweet, you know. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Don't you 
think I'm pretty? Most men think I'm pretty. I have a pretty body, don't you 
think?"
She raised her hospital gown over her head and pulled it off, and Colin was 
suddenly confronted with a very attractive, very willing, and very naked girl.
"Yes, Megan, you are very pretty, indeed," he said, "but I'm old enough to be 
your father. I'm probably much older than your father."
"I wouldn't know," she said coquettishly. "I've never known my father. But I've 
had older men than you, Colin. And I think you really are quite handsome. You 
will help me to get away from this place, won't you?" She shifted over close to 
him and slid up onto his lap. "Do please help me, Colin, and I will be ever so 
grateful!"
She nuzzled his ear with her tongue and nipped ever so lightly at his earlobe. 
Gently, but firmly, Colin pushed her away.
"You're a darling girl, Megan," he said, "but it wouldn't be right, you know. I 
like you, and I'd like to help you, but I don't really know how to help you get 
back to Pittsburgh. I'm not sure I understand how you got here, or where you 
really came from. Is there anything else you can tell me about Warrick? Maybe 
that will help."
"Don't you want me, Colin?" she said petulantly. "Don't you like me?"
"I like you very much," said Colin, "but first tell me about Warrick."
"Oh, very well. He is called Warrick the White, and he is the Grand Director of 
the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, and he lives in an alabaster tower not far from 
King Billy's royal palace in the center of Pittsburgh. He is the most powerful 
wizard in the twenty-seven kingdoms and I think he is a very evil man."
"Why is he evil?"
"Because he makes people disappear," she replied. "The way he made me 
disappear."
"But you haven't really disappeared, have you?" Colin said. "I mean, I can see 
you clearly. You're right there in front of me, in all your naked splendor."
She dimpled prettily. "My, how nice you talk! Why not come here and lie beside 
me?"
"Why don't you put your gown back on?" said Colin. "I'm afraid you might catch 
cold."
"Oh, I'm sure you can keep me warm," she said with a coy look.
"Let's get back to Warrick," Colin said, clearing his throat uneasily. He tried 
to look only into her eyes. "How did he make you disappear?"
"Why, I told you! He put me into his magical device and spoke a spell and here I 
am. He's done it to a lot of people, you know. Everybody says so. I never 
thought 'twould happen to me, for I've never done anything wrong, but then that 
awful deputy of Sheriff Waylon's arrested me because I wouldn't go with him 
because he smelled so bad, and now here I am. 'Tis not really very fair. Now I 
need to get back and they won't let me go. But you can help, Colin, can't you? 
You could take me with you? I'd be ever so sweet to you, I would."
The orderly knocked softly on the door and then opened it a crack. "Come on, 
man, let's go! I think I hear the duty nurse comin' down the hall!"
"Okay, one minute," Colin said. "Megan, just one more question-"
"Now, man, now, or we'll both get our asses busted!"
"Hell," said Colin, getting up. "I'm sorry, Megan, but I've got to go." .
"You'll come back and visit me again, won't you, Colin?" she said pleadingly. 
"You'll come back and take me with you? We can go back to Pittsburgh and I'll 
take ever such good care of you and-"
The orderly pulled him out the door. "Come on, man, we gotta get out of here 
now! She stopped in the ladies' room, but she'll be out in just a minute. Move!"
Suddenly, a blur moved past them, knocking them both aside, and Megan took off 
running down the hall, stark naked.
"Oh, shit!" said the orderly.
They had left the elevator keyed open, to facilitate a fast exit, and Megan ran 
straight for it.
"God damn it," said the orderly as he sprinted after her, with Colin huffing and 
puffing to stay on his heels.
Megan must have seen the elevator in operation before, because she knew to turn 
the key and push the buttons. The doors slid closed just as the orderly ran up 
to them.
"Oh, Jesus freakin' Christ," the orderly swore. "That tears it!"
"What do we do now?" asked Colin.
"First we get your ass outta here," the orderly said. "Man, I never shoulda let 
you talk me into this! Thank God I got a second key."
He inserted his spare key into the elevator lock and hit the call button, 
fidgeting nervously while they waited for the elevator to come back.
"Bad enough she got away, but if the duty nurse comes out and catches you here, 
I'm really screwed," the orderly said anxiously.
"She won't be able to get out, surely," Colin said. "They'll catch her in the 
lobby."
"I sure as hell hope so," said the orderly. "I can probably cover myself with 
some kind of story, but not if you're around. Let's have the money, man, and 
make it quick. I gotta get you outta here."
Colin counted out the bills as they rode down to the basement, where the orderly 
quickly took him through the maintenance corridors and then up a short flight of 
stairs and outside to the parking lot.
"All right, man, you're on your own," the orderly said. "I gotta get back and 
make up some kinda story about how she got past me. You were never here, you got 
it?"
"Right," said Colin. "Thanks again."
"Just get outta here, all right?"
Colin hurried toward his car while the orderly went back into the hospital. He 
got into the rented car and took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then rolled 
down the window, lit up a cigarette, and opened up the folder that contained the 
pirated photocopy of Megan's file.
No last name. No known address. No known living relatives. She was a complete 
Jane Doe. Nothing was known about her at all, just like with all the others. 
And, just like with all the others, there were no surgical scars, no 
innoculations, and no dental work whatsoever. No ID, no records, no history at 
all. It was as if she'd simply dropped in from another world.
There had to be an answer, Colin thought. All these strange cases were connected 
somehow. The same thread ran through all of them. Sooner or later, if he kept 
following this up, he'd have to run into the one clue that would make everything 
else fall into place. It was the most baffling story of his entire career, and 
he was not about to let go of it. Not for anything. One way or another, he would 
find the answer. And then he'd bust this whole story wide open.
He started to reach for the ignition, but suddenly his lap was full of girl. A 
very naked girl, squirming through the window and across his lap.
"Jesus!"
Megan crawled across him to the passenger side of the seat and said, "Quickly, 
drive your magic chariot, Colin! Hurry!"
"Nothing doing, love," said Colin. "You're not going anywhere with me."
"Oh, but I am," Megan replied. "Else I'll tell everyone 'twas you who helped me 
to escape. And I'll scream and say you tried to have your way with me and-"
"All right, all right!" said Colin, panicking as he reached for the ignition 
key. "Just don't scream, all right? And for God's sake, get down so nobody can 
see you!"
He started the car and pulled out of the lot, his hands gripping the steering 
wheel tightly. Great, he thought, just bloody great. Now I've got a naked crazy 
woman in my car and if I'm caught, they'll lock me up and throw away the key.
He heard a throaty giggle and glanced to his right, where Megan was huddled down 
on the floor of the car, her legs drawn up to her chin.
"Oh, Colin, isn't this marvelous?" she said. "We're having an adventure!"
"Right," said Colin as he drove. "And I'm having a bloody nervous breakdown."
The orderly had said she was nonviolent, Colin told himself. But judging by all 
the other cases he'd investigated, that made her the exception to the rule. He 
desperately hoped she was the exception to the rule. What in God's name was he 
going to do now?
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN
 
In the basement of The Stealers Tavern, among the wine and ale barrels by the 
flickering light of candles, a conspiracy was brewing. It was only a few hours 
till dawn, and the tavern had been closed for several hours. The doors upstairs 
were bolted and the lights were all extinguished. However, in the dank and musty 
basement, the senior members of The Stealers Guild were meeting in a secret 
convocation.
"I tell you, 'tis past time for action!" Ugly George was saying. "Our people are 
being clapped in prison left and right, and soon there will be no one left to 
pay the dues!"
"Ugly George is right," said Ferret Phil. "Not only are his alleymen all bein' 
imprisoned, but my footpads, too. And the members of your local are all bein' 
pinched as well, Fingers."
Fingers Frank agreed. "Aye, we've had ten cutpurses thrown in the slam this past 
fortnight alone."
"You've gotten off easy, all of you," said Lady Donna, known to one and all 
among The Stealers Guild simply as "La Donna," and though she was a commoner, 
she affected an aristocratic manner and liked being referred to as "the Lady" by 
the members of her local. " 'Tis my girls who've suffered worst at the hands of 
Waylon and his deputies. 'Tis no longer enough that they freely bestow their 
favors on demand. The moment any of the deputies fall below their quota, my 
girls are the first to be arrested, as they are the most vulnerable and the 
easiest to pinch."
"Aye, I've pinched a few in my time," Ugly George said with a leer.
"You may jest, you lout, but 'tis no laughing matter," said La Donna. "Revenues 
are falling off, and with the edicts driving citizens out of town in droves, 
business is bad for everyone, not just for us, but for all the guilds in 
Pittsburgh."
" 'Tis true," said Fingers Frank. "With taxes raised and raised again, and 
business fallin' off, mere's hardly any point to cuttin' purses, for there ain't 
no money in 'em!"
"What say the assassins?" asked Dirty Dan, the tavern keeper and proprietor of 
The Stealers Tavern, and also secretly Director of The Stealers Guild, though it 
wasn't really all that much of a secret.
Mike the Mace shifted uncomfortably on his keg. He was a big man, feared and 
respected throughout all the twenty-seven kingdoms as the second-top-rated 
assassin in the Guild, but administration had never been his strong suit.
"Well, by rights, it should be MacGregor sittin' in on this here meetin' and not 
me, but Mac's off on a job someplace and out of reach."
"Aye, we understand that," Dirty Dan replied. "But in his absence, the 
leadership of the assassins in Guild matters falls to you. What is the feeling 
among the members of your local?"
"Well, they're none too happy with the situation," Mike the Mace replied. "With 
Sheriff Waylon clampin' down on lawbreakers, folks are thinkin' twice before 
they put a contract out on anyone. Times are gettin' lean."
"And the mood among the populace is grim," said Gentlemanly Johnny, the senior 
member of the Swindlers local. "King Billy keeps ignoring the petitions and 
rarely even ventures out in public anymore. The people believe he doesn't care 
about them. They believe the rumors that the royal wizard is merely acting upon 
his instructions, conjuring some great spell at his behest. They believe the 
king has given his allegiance to the powers of darkness. And the sheriff, his 
brother, is aiding him and Warrick in these diabolical, black rites."
"So we are all agreed, then, that something must be done," said Dirty Dan. "Yet 
no one here has yet dared speak the one word that is foremost in our minds."
"Regicide," La Donna said.
"Insurrection," Fingers said.
"Revolution," said Ugly George.
"A coup d'etat, said Gentlemanly Johnny.
"What?" the others all said together, staring at him.
"All of the above," said Gentlemanly Johnny with a shrug.
"Then we are all agreed upon a plan of action," Dirty Dan said. "The king must 
die. And his royal wizard with him."
"And don't forget the royal sheriff," added Fingers.
"And the queen," said Ugly George.
"The queen?" La Donna said.
"Well... sure, why not? Might as well make a clean sweep."
"Oh, well, all right, the queen, too," said Dirty Dan.
"We must foment revolution," Gentlemanly Johnny said.
"What's 'foment' mean?" asked Ferret Phil.
"Incite the people to revolt," Johnny replied.
"Oh. Right, then. What he said."
"How are we supposed to do that?" Fingers asked.
" 'Tis very simple, my friends," said Gentlemanly Johnny. "We make the 
aristocracy our targets."
"The who?" said Ugly George.
"The nobles, you great oaf," La Donna said. "Go on, Johnny. You have a plan?"
Gentlemanly Johnny got up and made a little bow. "A good swindler always has a 
plan, my lady. Our first step must be to prepare the good citizens of Pitt for 
an uprising. We shall begin here, in the capital, and once we've made a good 
beginning, it will spread of its own throughout the kingdom. All we need do is 
gently nudge our plan along. Each time the sheriff's deputies make an arrest, 
our people must be there, to stir up dissatisfaction after the fact. Each time a 
new edict is posted, our people must be there, to encourage resentment of the 
sheriff and the king. Each time a noblewoman purchases a brand-new dress, our 
women must be there, to comment on how the common folk cannot afford to clothe 
their children or themselves because of the new taxes. Each time a nobleman buys 
a horse, someone must be there to complain about their worn-out shoes. Each time 
an armorer receives an order for a brand-new sword or knife, someone must 
observe how it is meant to be plunged into the backs of the common people of the 
kingdom.
"In time, and not a very long time, I will wager, resentment of the king, the 
sheriff, and the upper classes will be at a fever pitch, and when we judge the 
time to be just right, we shall proceed to the next step of the plan."
"And what shall that be?" Ferret asked, his eyes aglow with eagerness.
"Only this, my friend. We shall arrange for one of our people to be arrested."
"Well, now, what's the bloody point of that?" asked Ugly George. "Our people are 
already bein' arrested by the score! You'd have us help the sheriff?"
"Aye, but only so that we might help ourselves," said Gentlemanly Johnny, "for 
this will be no ordinary arrest. It shall be planned carefully, by us, so that 
we control the time and place, and so it occurs in public, with many people 
present. We shall make certain that our people are in among the crowd, and that 
the sheriff's men are greatly outnumbered. When they make their move to 
apprehend the culprit that we shall provide for them, we make our move, and 
overwhelm them, setting free the prisoner as if it were a spontaneous action of 
the crowd. And mark my words, there will be those among the crowd who'll join us 
in the act, caught up in the fever of the moment.
"From that point on," Gentlemanly Johnny continued, "each time the sheriff and 
his men try to arrest someone, we shall interfere with them, and set free the 
prisoners, without ever identifying who we are, so that it will appear the 
people are rising up against the forces of the king. And once we start it, the 
people will continue of their own accord and follow our example. Then we proceed 
to the third stage of the plan."
"Go on," said Fingers eagerly. "What's the third part?"
"An organized campaign of harassment of the nobility," said Gentlemanly Johnny. 
"Each time a noblewoman drives by in her carriage, someone must be there to 
start the people jeering. Each time a nobleman sets foot out into the streets, 
someone must be there to start pelting him with dirt clods and pieces of manure. 
At every turn, their dignity must be affronted, and they must be made the 
scapegoats for the edicts of the king. Not only shall it arouse the people's 
ire, it shall arouse the anger of the nobility, as well, and they shall direct 
it at the king."
"Then we take over and start the revolution!" Fingers said excitedly.
"Nay, my friend, that would never do," said Gentlemanly Johnny. "We must remain 
behind the scenes, for in no way can this revolt be made to appear as an 
uprising of the criminals in Pittsburgh. It must be an uprising of the good, 
honest, common, working people of the kingdom."
"Then who shall lead the revolt?" asked Dirty Dan.
"Ah, that is the beauty of the plan," said Gentlemanly Johnny. "Once the flames 
of the revolution have been fanned, the fire shall burn freely of its own 
accord. The leaders will rise up among the people. Never fear, at such times, 
there are always men who are quick to take advantage of the situation. And if 
anything goes wrong and the revolt should fail, why, 'tis the leaders who'll be 
blamed and hauled off to the execution block, not us. All we need to do is make 
a small investment of our time and energies to start the venture, then sit back 
and profit from it." He smiled. "And business should be brisk, indeed. What say 
you, my friends and colleagues?"
"I move we adopt Gentlemanly Johnny's plan!" La Donna said.
"I second the motion!" cried out Ugly George.
"All in favor say 'aye,'" said Dirty Dan.
"Aye!" they chorused unanimously.
"Motion carried!" Dirty Dan said, slamming his truncheon down upon a keg. "I 
propose a toast! To the revolution! Down with Bloody King Billy!"
"To the revolution!" they all cried as one. "Down with Bloody King Billy!"
" 'A punishment most vile,' she said," moaned Fifer Bob. " 'A punishment most 
vile.' I told you she'd be mad, I told you, but did you listen? Oh, why did I 
let you talk me into it? It's all your fault, Bill, all your bloody fault!"
"Oh, shut up," Long Bill said in a disgusted tone.
Silent Fred said nothing, but then, that was not unusual. He looked utterly 
miserable, with his lower lip stuck out, and his face completely encrusted with 
filth. All their faces were covered with filth, and they looked a sorry sight, 
indeed, bent over and locked into the stocks in front of One-Eyed Jack's. They 
could move their heads a little, and they could wiggle their fingers and their 
toes, but otherwise they were immobilized. They were numb, and cold, and utterly 
degraded. All day, they'd been locked up in the stocks, tormented by the Awful 
Urchin Gang, who took great delight in pelting them with dirt clods, horrid muck 
scooped up from the hog pens, sticks and stones and anything else that came to 
hand (don't ask). They cut switches from the bramble bushes and whipped them on 
their backsides, and when they tired of that, they sat in front of them, making 
faces at them, spitting, and pinching their cheeks and noses painfully. Tomas de 
Torquemada, in his most diabolically creative moods during the Spanish 
Inquisition, could not have held a candle to the Awful Urchin Gang for devising 
painful and humiliating tortures.
"When I get out of here, I'm going to strangle each and every one of those 
miserable brats," Long Bill said.
"When I get out of here, I'm going to strangle you," said Fifer Bob.
"What if she never lets us out?" said Silent Fred, and the shock of hearing him 
speak a complete sentence was almost as great to the others as the horrifying 
possibility he had brought up.
" 'Twould only be a fitting reward for the likes of you three," Shannon said, 
and the three of them glanced up, as much as they could crane their heads back 
in the stocks, to see her standing in the street before them, legs spread apart 
and her hands on her hips. "Well?" she said. "Have you nothing to say for 
yourselves?"
They all looked down morosely.
"By rights, I ought to let you rot in there," she said, "remain as playthings 
for the urchins till they stripped the hides right off your backs. But Doc has 
asked me to be charitable and I must be getting soft, for I agreed to let you 
go."
They all looked up, unable to believe that they were getting a reprieve.
"The next time, I shall not be so merciful," she said.
"There will never be a next time, Shannon, we all swear it, don't we lads?" said 
Fifer Bob.
"Aye, Shannon, we so swear," Long Bill said contritely.
Silent Fred merely looked down at the ground and nodded.
"Well, I think perhaps you've learned your lesson," she said. "Never let it be 
said that Black Shannon is unjust."
She bent over to unfasten the stocks, then the three imprisoned brigands heard a 
soft thunk, followed by a grunt, and Shannon fell down in the dirt in front of 
them, unconscious.
"Shannon?" said Long Bill. And then he saw a pair of high leather boots in front 
of him.
"Well, well. What have we here?"
They looked up into the grinning face of Black Jack. Behind him, a group of 
rough and surly looking men rode up on horseback. Jack crouched down and grabbed 
Long Bill by the hair, jerking his face up. "This one of "em?" he said.
"Aye," said one of the men on horseback. "I remember him stopping at the inn and 
arguing about a chess game with another."
"This one?" said Black Jack, jerking Silent Fred's head up by the hair.
"That's him."
Black Jack knelt in front of Fifer Bob, who looked up at him wide-eyed with 
fright.
"Aye, and this third one matches the description. What a pleasant surprise. All 
trussed up and waitin' for us, meekly as you please." He stood and turned 
Shannon over on her back with his foot. "So. This is the infamous Black Shannon, 
eh? She lays so sweetly in repose."
"She can lay sweetly with all of us tonight," said one of the ruffians behind 
him, and the others laughed unpleasantly.
"I won't be having none of that," Black Jack snapped.
"Why not, Jack? Where's the harm? You got what you came for. What 'bout the rest 
of us?"
"The rest of you signed on for a share of the bounty, and there's a right 
handsome bounty on this lass, as well as on the others. It won't do to bring her 
in as damaged goods. By all accounts, she fights like the very Devil and you'll 
like as not have to kill her before she'll give you what you want. Nay, lads, 
we'll deliver her unharmed, and the money she'll bring in will let you buy your 
fill of pretty wenches back in Pittsburgh. Aye, Black Shannon brought in by 
Black Jack. It has a proper ring to it, it does."
"Now, just a moment," said Long Bill. "Can't we talk about this?"
"Silence, dog!" Black Jack said, smashing him in the face with his gloved fist. 
"Release them, then bind them up together." He saw Shannon start to stir. "And 
tie up the lass, as well. Be quick about it. We'd best be off before we are 
discovered."
MacGregor crouched down as Bloody Bob held up the lantern. "Aye, there's been 
trouble here," he said, studying the ground. "Men with horses. At least a dozen, 
I'd say. They all reined in right here. Bring that lantern closer, Bob."
He moved forward, peering intently at the ground. "One man stood here. Crouched 
down before the stocks." He crouched down in the boot prints. "Aye, so he could 
see their faces." He looked around. "And here, right here someone fell. The body 
was moved and... Bob, come closer with that lantern!"
"What do you see, Mac?" asked the old brigand, bending down with the lantern.
"Right here," said Mac, "scratched into the dirt. The letters 'B' and 'J.'" He 
stretched out full length on the ground. "Aye, she scratched this into the dirt 
as she lay here on the ground." He got up and began to move about the site, 
acting out what must have happened. "She came to release them, and she stood 
right here, then she moved closer, came around to the side of the stocks... and 
was struck down from behind."
He grabbed the lantern from Bloody Bob and glanced around. "He must have waited 
by the corner of the building there, and come around the side. Aye, here's his 
track. He crept up behind her as she bent down to unfasten the stocks, struck 
her, and she fell here.... He must have thought that she was senseless. Perhaps 
she was, but she came to in time to scratch these letters in the dirt... 'B J.'" 
He scowled. " 'B J.' What might... of course! Black Jack!"
"Who is this Black Jack?" asked Bob.
"A soldier of fortune, a bounty hunter. A killer," said MacGregor. "We've 
crossed swords before, but he managed to escape me. He was after your three 
friends, the same as I was. And now he's found them. He's brought more men with 
him this time. 'Twould cut into his bounty, but I think as much as he was after 
them, he was after me, as well."
"There's a bounty on you, too?" asked Bloody Bob.
"Nay, but there's a reputation in it for him if he kills me. But now that he's 
got Shannon, he's found himself a windfall. The bounty on her, together with the 
bounty on the others, will allow him to pay off his hired ruffians and still 
have plenty for himself. He'll be taking them all back to Pittsburgh."
"He won't get there alive," said Bloody Bob. "We'll fetch the others and give 
chase."
"They've had a good head start," said Mac, shaking his head. " 'Twill be dawn 
before you can get back and rouse the brigands. And by the time they all get 
moving.... We may never catch them."
"They will have to camp along the road to rest," said Bob. " 'Tis a goodly 
journey to Pittsburgh."
"Aye," said Mac, "but they will expect pursuit. Black Jack's no fool. He will 
push hard, without stopping to rest, and the river's but two days journey from 
here. If he reaches it first, he will cross, then cut loose the ferry ropes and 
let the ferry drift downstream. 'Tis what I would do if I were in his place. 
Then there would be no catching him. You ride back hard and rouse the men, Bob, 
but I cannot wait for them. I must go on ahead."
"Against at least a dozen well-armed men?" asked Bloody Bob. He shook his 
helmeted head. "Even for you, Mac, those would be stiff odds. I'd hate to wager 
on your chances."
"I'll be taking my lads with me. They'll help even out the odds. At worst, maybe 
I can slow them down enough to allow you to catch up with the others. You'd best 
be off, and quickly. There's no time to lose. They must not reach the river."
"I'm on my way," said Bob, mounting his huge warhorse. "Good luck, Mac. We'll be 
comin' right behind you."
"Ride like the wind," said Mac.
As Bob galloped off down the road back toward the keep, MacGregor ran up the 
steps of One-Eyed Jack's and started banging on the door. After a few moments, 
Jack came to the door in his nightgown and nightcap, his empty eye socket 
uncovered by the customary patch and appearing very disconcerting. Mac brushed 
past him before Jack could say a word and bounded up the stairs to the room 
where the three brothers slept. He pounded on the door. No answer.
"Stop makin' such a racket!" Jack called up, from the stairs. " 'Tis the middle 
of the night!"
Mac ignored him and pounded on the door again. Frustrated, he rattled it and it 
swung open. The three brothers were all sprawled out, dead to the world. Two of 
them were on the bed, Hugh on his back, Dugh on his stomach, and Lugh was 
sprawled out on the floor, lying on his side with his hands beneath his cheek, 
like a small child.
"Wake up, blast your eyes!" Mac shouted. "Wake up, I said!"
They didn't even stir.
"Hugh!" said Mac, reaching out to shake him. Nothing doing. "Lugh, damn your 
soul, wake up!"
He kicked the sleeping Lugh, but with no result other than a grunt from his 
sleeping henchman, followed by a shutter-rattling snore. Mac grabbed a washbasin 
from the table and emptied it upon them. Still they slept. And then he noticed 
the three empty jugs of Mick O'Fallon's peregrine wine lying on the floor.
"Oh, you bloody idiots!" swore Mac. Three whole jugs of that vile paralyzer. If 
it didn't kill them, they'd be in a coma for at least a week.
One-Eyed Jack stood in the doorway behind him, holding a candle. "You won't be 
rousing them tonight," he said. "Maybe not tomorrow, either. Never saw anybody 
drink like that before. Cast-iron stomachs, like my Mary, bless her heart. 
Drinks like a trooper, she does-"
Mac pushed past him and ran back down the stairs, cursing to himself. There was 
nothing else to do. He'd have to go after Black Jack and his ruffians alone.
Brewster stood up on the tower of his keep, looking down at the flickering 
embers of the campfires below. The grounds outside the keep were starting to 
resemble a shanty town. The brigands were now spending practically all their 
time at the keep, and instead of going back to the Roost each night, many of 
them had simply moved lock, stock, and barrel onto the grounds. Beyond the 
crumbling remnants of the outer wall, the meadow was dotted with tents and 
wooden shacks, and many of the brigands simply slept in the great hall of the 
keep below, passing out at the tables and on the floor after their nightly 
revels. Brewster imagined that it was rather like having a biker gang move in 
with you. He didn't really mind, though. He enjoyed having them around.
His whole life had been spent in fairly solitary pursuits. As a boy, he had been 
obsessed with science, and while the other kids were all out playing Little 
League baseball or hanging out together, he stayed at home, in the basement 
workshop his father had helped him set up, working on experiments. When other 
boys were building plastic models of ships and World War II airplanes, he was 
building radio sets and designing circuits. And when other boys had started 
dating in high school, he was already in college at M.I.T., amazing his 
professors. All his life, he had been the classic nerd, and it wasn't until he 
reached his mid-twenties that other men started to regard him with serious 
respect and women began to find him interesting. Yet, he realized all too well 
that he possessed some glaring shortcomings when it came to social skills, 
especially where women were concerned.
Women were generally far too subtle for him and whenever they had seemed 
interested in him, he'd usually missed all the signals. If they became bold and 
came right out with it, he would become flustered. The few relationships he'd 
blundered into had all ended fairly quickly, due to lack of common interests or 
his own perpetual absent-mindedness and preoccupation with his work. Pamela was 
different.
Pamela was the first woman he had ever met who understood him and, more than 
that, was patient enough to overlook his faults. In her own way, she'd had 
similar problems. She was from a wealthy, socially prominent family and she was 
beautiful. She had attracted plenty of men, but often they were intimidated by 
her intelligence and self-sufficiency, and she had been unwilling to subordinate 
her own interests and her career to any man. In many ways, they were perfectly 
suited to each other.
She'd told him that she was attracted to him from the very start. He hadn't had 
a clue. He had, of course, noticed that she was beautiful and vivacious, and 
very bright, but it had simply never occurred to him that she could have any 
interest in him. He had remarked upon that once, soon after they started to see 
each other, and had been astonished to hear her say that many women found him 
attractive. He simply couldn't understand it.
Sometime in his mid- to late-twenties, the ugly duckling had turned into a swan, 
except when he looked into a mirror, he still saw an ugly duckling, awkward, 
shy, and introverted. When he assumed that women were merely being friendly and 
polite, Pamela insisted they were coming on to him. He simply never saw it.
At heart, he still felt that most people saw him as "the geek," the nickname the 
other children had bestowed on him in elementary school. Even after he'd become 
a well-respected scientist working in his own private research laboratory at one 
of the largest corporations in the world and making more money than he'd ever 
dreamed of, he still remained an outsider. Other men gave him respect and 
deferred to his judgement, but they never asked him to join them for a few pints 
at the pub, or watch a football game, or any of those other things that men do 
to express their camaraderie. But here, in this strange world, everything was 
different.
He was not only respected, but accepted. These simple, unaffected people 
genuinely seemed to like him. These brigands were manly men in every sense, 
rough and coarse and unpretentious, and even the most macho male in the modern 
world that Brewster came from would seem like a wimp among them, yet they all 
not only gave him their respect, but clapped him on the shoulder, called him 
Doc, and treated him with warm affection. And they were genuinely interested in 
everything he said and did. The women were much like the men, honest, open, and 
forthright, completely lacking in those devious little subtleties of modem 
social interaction. He had never felt so comfortable among any group of people 
before. It was as if he had become a part of one very large, extended family. He 
wished Pamela could be here, but she would feel as out of place in this world as 
he felt among her family and high-society friends.
"Something on your mind, Doc?"
He turned and saw Rachel sitting on the wall behind him, her ever-present bongo 
drums cradled in her lap. She tapped out a soft, rapid rhythm on them with her 
fingers.
"Oh, Rachel. I didn't hear you come up."
"Elves move quietly," she said with a grin. Since the night she'd shown up at 
the keep, pursued by unicorns, she had never left. No one had invited her to 
stay, but no one had asked her to leave, either. Brewster had no idea where she 
slept, but every time he turned around, there she was, watching everything with 
an honest, open curiosity.
At first, the brigands had been uneasy in her presence. There was a natural 
prejudice there. Humans and elves didn't get along. The fact that elves drank 
human blood probably had a great deal to do with it. However, Rachel was a 
vegetarian and, apparently, a bit unusual for an elf. Often, late at night, she 
would sit by a campfire, surrounded by curious brigands, and compose 
stream-of-consciousness poetry while she accompanied herself on the drums. None 
of the outlaws understood it, but they all seemed to find it fascinating. To 
Brewster, it sounded like a strange combination of Alien Ginsberg and Jim 
Morrison.
"I was just thinking," he said.
"About home?"
"Yes, about home, and other things."
"I've never really had a home," said Rachel, "unless you count the forest as a 
home, and I've always sort of wandered. Home is where my head is."
He glanced at her and smiled. "Back where I come from, they have a somewhat 
similar saying. 'Home is where the heart is.' But I think, for me, at any rate, 
your way of saying it is closer to the truth. I have never been quite so happy 
as when I was working. Wherever I could do my work, that was where I lived. That 
was really home."
"So then, in a way, this is home to you, as well," said Rachel.
Brewster shook his head. "No, not really. But in some ways, it's almost 
beginning to feel like it. The kind of work I usually do, I can't do here. But 
in another sense, the work I am doing here is equally rewarding. I admit that 
sometimes I feel lost here, but this is the greatest adventure of my life. In 
fact, it's the only real adventure of my life. I have always been a quiet man, a 
man of learning. Yet here, I feel like a man of action." He looked out toward 
the campfires of the brigands. "I have never known people like these. They're 
refreshing, stimulating. They've made me realize that although I have 
accomplished a great deal in my life, I've never really done anything. And here, 
I feel that I'm doing something. Yes, Rachel, I miss my home, but I'm having the 
time of my life."
Rachel rapped out a rapid tattoo on her drums, then settled into a steady beat. 
Boom-chak-chak-boom-chak-chak-boom.... 
 
"The dreamer stood upon the tower and looked out at life,
and yearned to leave the security of dreams for what he saw.
So he came down out of the tower to walk life's broken meadows,
and found that he was living out his dreams."
 
Boom-chakka-boom-chakka-boom.
Brewster smiled. "I really like that. Would you write it down for me?"
Rachel shrugged. "Elves have a rich oral tradition, but we have no written 
language."
"Take that, Professor Tolkein," Brewster mumbled.
"What?"
"Never mind. Just mumbling to myself."
"I will remember it for you, if you like, and recite it any time you wish."
"It's a deal. Next time, I'll have to be sure and-" A shout from below 
distracted him and he looked down over the parapet to see a horseman come 
galloping at full speed into the meadow, roaring at the top of his lungs. He 
couldn't make out what he was yelling, but he clearly recognized the voice as 
Bloody Bob's. No one else could sound like that.
At once, the camp below became a flurry of activity as the brigands came running 
out of their tents and shacks, and out from the great hall of the keep. Torches 
bobbed below him in the meadow, and there was angry shouting.
"I wonder what's going on?" said Brewster, looking down.
"One way to find out," said Rachel. She hopped down from the wall and ran down 
the stairs. The commotion below was increasing. In the darkness, illuminated 
only by the moving torches and the light from the campfires, Brewster couldn't 
really see what was happening very clearly, but figures were rushing about down 
there, and there was a lot of shouting. A short while later, Rachel came running 
back up the stairs to the top of the tower, accompanied by Mick.
"Mick, what's going on down there?" asked Brewster.
"They've taken Shannon!" Mick said. "And Long Bill, Fifer Bob, and Silent Fred, 
as well!"
"Who?" said Brewster.
"Bob says 'tis some soldier of fortune named Black Jack," said Rachel. "And he 
had a party of men with him."
"A dozen or more," said Mick. "Bounty hunters," he spat out with angry scorn. 
"Bob says they'll be taking them back to Pittsburgh. Mac's gone after them 
alone."
"Alone?" said Brewster. "Against over a dozen men?"
" 'Twas no choice he had," said Mick. "The road to Pittsburgh is broken by the 
Great River two days journey from here. There's a ferry raft that takes 
travelers across, and if they cross the river first, they can cut the ferry 
loose and men there'll be no catching up with them. Mac says they've got a good 
head start, but if he rides hard, perhaps he can catch up with them and try to 
slow them down in time for the rest of us to get there."
"He'll get himself killed," said Brewster. "I don't care how good a swordsman he 
is, one man against a dozen or more is suicide."
"If we ride hard, we might catch them," Mick said.
Brewster frowned. "Even if he rode at a full gallop all the way, it had to take 
Bloody Bob almost half an hour to get here from Brigand's Roost. And it would 
take the rest of you at least a half an hour to reach there from here, so that's 
an hour lost already, not counting the time it'll take to get everyone together 
and mounted. Those bounty hunters already have several hours head start. They'll 
know the brigands will come after them, and if they know that getting to the 
ferry first will effectively cut off pursuit, they won't waste any time. They'll 
be moving fast." He shook his head. "I don't see how you can catch them."
"We must try!" said Mick.
"Doc's right," said Rachel. " Twill be no use. The bounty hunters will be 
mounted on fine horses. Such men spare no expense when it comes to their arms 
and their steeds. Many of the brigands have no horses of their own. They'll have 
to double up or ride in carts. You'll never catch them."
"Doc, there must be something you can do!" said Mick in an agonized tone. "If 
they turn Shannon over to the sheriff, she'll be beheaded! And the others will 
be taken to the royal wizard's tower! 'Tis said no one ever escapes from there!"
Brewster compressed his lips into a tight grimace. "I don't see what I can do," 
he said.
"Will you come with us?" Mick said.
"I have no horse, and even if I did, I'm not much of a rider, Mick. I'd only 
slow you down."
With a look of exasperation, Mick turned and ran back down the stairs to join 
the others. Brewster could already see a number of brigands mounted down below, 
and the rest rushing with their weapons toward the carts.
"Damn. What we need is a helicopter. If only..." he broke off.
"What is it, Doc?" said Rachel.
"Yes, it might work!" said Brewster. He glanced at his watch. "In another hour, 
it'll be midnight. He always comes around midnight."
"Rory!" Rachel said.
Brewster headed for the stairs.
"Where are you going?" Rachel asked.
"To get my gun."
 
CHAPTER TWELVE
 
The brigands got themselves organized quickly and within less than twenty 
minutes they were riding off down the road to the Roost. The time had seemed 
much longer to Brewster, and now he waited atop the tower parapet, anxiously, 
feeling the weight of his Smith & Wesson in its holster on his belt, and he 
wondered what in God's name he was thinking of. Rory would come, as the dragon 
came every night at around midnight. He knew that. He recalled the first time 
Rory came, and how frightened he had felt... no, frightened was too mild a word 
for it, he'd been plain scared shitless, but amazingly, his curiosity had 
overwhelmed his fear and he had gone up to meet the dragon. The mark of a true 
scientist, he thought, with a nervous, giddy sort of feeling. Let's see old Carl 
try that one! Wouldn't it be wonderful, indeed? He had actually made friends 
with the fantastic creature, and he could never quite get over the magical 
miraculousness of its existence. It was, in every sense, a fairy tale come to 
life, huge, reptilian, with iridescent scales and talons that could rip him open 
from head to toe as easily as he could peel a banana. And yet it possessed a 
droll, intellectual demeanor and an avid curiosity about his world, which it 
claimed all dragons saw in dreams. Meeting Rory was the most dramatic and 
thrilling experience of his entire life, and he never tired of the dragon's 
visits, and didn't care how late they stayed up talking, though usually the 
dragon, in a very gentlemanly manner, never stayed longer than an hour or two, 
at most, and always apologized for keeping him up late on the occasions it 
stayed longer. The brigands were frightened of the beast and always kept their 
distance, but Brewster had come to look upon the creature with affection, for 
all its fearsomeness. He had never thought that he could ever have an experience 
to match Rory's nightly visits. Yet now, what he was contemplating was even more 
fantastic.
As Rachel watched, bemused, he kept pacing back and forth across the tower 
parapet, talking to himself in an effort to relieve the anxiety he felt, not 
knowing if he was trying to talk himself into going through with his idea or out 
of it.
"This is crazy," he said. "I don't know what the hell I'm thinking of. I've 
never done anything like this in my life. I've never even thought of doing 
anything like this in life! I mean, look at me, I've got a gun strapped to my 
hip! A gun!"
He glanced at Rachel, who merely sat there on the wall, watching him with that 
mocking little look and saying nothing.
"Look who I'm talking to," he said. "I'm talking to an elf! You don't even know 
what a gun is. Hell, I've never even used a gun. I mean,. I've taken a few shots 
at the range, but I was so nervous I couldn't even hit the goddam target and now 
I'm standing here with the thing strapped on my hip, like Roy Rogers, ready to 
ride off to the rescue when I don't even know what the hell I'm doing. Only 
instead of riding Trigger, I'm thinking of mounting up on a dragon! It's insane, 
that's what it is, positively insane. Rory might not even go for it."
"Go for what?" said a cement-mixer voice behind him, and he was so startled that 
he actually jumped.
He turned around and there was Rory, perched on the wall like a giant 
pterodactyl. It seemed impossible that anything that big could move so quietly, 
and yet Rory could glide in softer than the whisper of a feather.
"God, you startled me!" said Brewster.
"My apologies," the dragon said, "but you seemed quite intent upon your 
conversation and I didn't wish to interrupt."
"I was just talking to myself," said Brewster. "Trying to psych myself up into 
doing what I'm thinking of doing, which if I had any sense, I wouldn't even 
consider for a moment, only I just can't see any way around it. There's just no 
time, the brigands will never catch up to them..." and the whole story came 
pouring out of him in one mad rush.
"I understand," the dragon said when Brewster finally paused for breath. "And I 
am perfectly willing to help in any way I can. However, I also fully understand 
your reservations."
"Reservations?" Brewster said weakly. "Rory, the mere idea of it scares the 
daylights out of me!"
"But there is no real need for you to go," the dragon said. "I could easily 
catch those bounty hunters on my own and free your friends. You could wait here 
in perfect safety."
Brewster stared at the beast. "You'd do that?"
"Of course. What are friends for?"
Brewster licked his lips. "Wait here in perfect safety," he said. "I've lived my 
whole life in perfect safety. My whole damn life. The one time I ever took a 
real risk, I wound up here, and it's been the most wonderful adventure of my 
life. I'll admit I'm frightened, Rory, but I don't want to play things safe 
anymore. I can't just look out at life from my tower."
He looked over his shoulder at Rachel, who grinned and gave him a raised fist 
gesture. "That's the spirit, Doc! Seize the moment! Squeeze the day!"
"That's 'seize the day...."' He stopped. "No, you know what, you're right. I 
like 'squeeze the day.' Wring all the life you can out of every single moment. 
To hell with playing it safe! For once in my life, I'm going to do something!"
"Climb aboard," said Rory.
"Give 'em a taste of steel, Doc!" said Rachel.
Brewster climbed up on the dragon's back. "I'll do better than that, kid. I'll 
give 'em a taste of lead!"
And with that, the dragon spread its huge, leathery wings and plunged off the 
parapet into the darkness. As Rachel ran up to the parapet to watch, she heard 
Doc's rapidly receding voice crying out, "Oh, shiiiiiiit!"
"Hmmm. Curious battle cry," she said.
Mac rode like a man possessed, not thinking of the odds he'd have to face, but 
worried only that his horse would give out before he could catch them. If that 
happened, he'd simply have to steal another one. There was an inn on the road to 
the Great River, and if he kept up this breakneck pace, he'd reach it shortly 
before dawn. He could get another horse there at their stable, assuming they had 
a decent one and not some broken-down old mare. What were the chances? Not many 
travelers on the road this time of year. He'd simply have to hope for the best. 
He could not afford to slacken his pace.
How much of a head start did they have? No way of knowing for sure, but the 
tracks back at the Roost seemed relatively fresh. He could see no tracks now, 
impossible in the pitch blackness of the night, but fortunately, he knew where 
they were going, where they had to go. They would be making for the river with 
all possible speed. With a sinking feeling, he realized that no matter how 
quickly the brigands could mount their pursuit, they would never make it in 
time. If it wasn't for the river, then eventually, they could hope to overtake 
Black Jack and his bounty hunters, but the river would defeat them if Black Jack 
reached it first.
The river was too deep, too wide, and too swift-flowing for horses to swim 
across. The only way across was by the ferry raft, and it was a mere matter of a 
few moments work to cut it loose. The heavy ropes that guided it across the 
river would be severed, and the raft would swiftly drift downstream, out of 
reach, and that would be the end of it. They could build another raft, and 
perhaps repair the ropes, or obtain new ones, and get strong swimmers to cross 
the river's span with them, but by the time all that was done, Black Jack would 
be so far ahead they'd never catch him. No, it was all up to him.
In all his life, he .thought, as he galloped down the dark road through the 
forest, he had never met a woman even remotely like Shannon. No one had ever 
kindled such a fire in him. Out of all the women in the world, she was the only 
one for him, and now that he had found her, the thought of losing her was more 
than he could bear. It made no difference how many men Black Jack had brought 
with him. He'd kill them all, each and every cursed one of them, or die in the 
attempt.
There wasn't a sound in the forest as he rode, save for the steady drumming of 
his horse's hooves upon the hard-packed earth, ba-da-da-dum, ba-da-da-dum, 
ba-da-da-dum, like the rapid beating of his heart. He could hardly see anything 
in front of him. If Black Jack had thrown up any barricades in the road behind 
him, Mac knew that he would run right into them before he could even see them, 
but he was gambling that Black Jack wouldn't have wasted any time. He'd have 
trussed up his prisoners and thrown them over the horses, so they could move 
more quickly, and for Shannon and the others, it would be a jarring, brutal 
ride. If they had any fight at all left in them, it would be knocked out of them 
by the jouncing they'd receive as Black Jack and his men rode full speed for the 
river.
It would all be up to him. He wouldn't be able to count on Shannon, or on the 
three brigands, who'd be numb to begin with, from being locked up in the stocks 
for an entire day. And he knew he couldn't count on reinforcements reaching him 
in time. He had his blades, and he had his skill and years of experience behind 
him, but that was no guarantee of success. He decided not to think about that. 
All he could hope for now was that he could catch up to them in time.
He rode grimly, allowing the steady rhythm of the gallop to fill his mind. After 
a while, the first gray light of dawn began to show through the thick branches 
overhead. The inn at the crossroads was just ahead. He could change horses 
there. His own mount was nearly spent. The poor animal was breathing hard and 
gasping, and lather covered its flanks. As dawn broke, he reached the crossroads 
and galloped up to the inn. He reined in before it and dismounted, and no sooner 
had he stepped off his horse than the animal went down to its knees and fell 
over on its side, its flanks heaving. It would go no farther. He had run it 
nearly to death. He ran up to the door of the inn and pounded on it furiously.
"Open up! Open up, damn your eyes!"
After a moment or two, he heard someone yell that they were coming and a few 
seconds later, the innkeeper opened up the door, his eyes wide.
"I need a fresh horse, and quickly!" Mac said.
"Would that I could help you, good sir," the innkeeper began, "but you see-"
He suddenly found a knife blade at his throat.
"A horse, I said, or I'll slit your throat from ear to ear!"
"Pray, sir, don't kill me! If I had a horse, 'twould be yours, I swear it, but 
they took them all and left me none! See for yourself!"
"Who? Who took them?"
"A party of armed men, sir. Came by last night with four captives, they did, 
slung over their horses. I had but three horses in my stable and they took them 
all, stole them, they did, leaving me with none! Pray, sir, have pity...."
Mac released the man and ran toward the stable. There was not a horse in sight. 
And it was impossible for him to ride his own. The animal was completely spent. 
It still lay on the ground, its breathing labored. Mac cursed and ran back to 
the innkeeper.
"Where's the nearest farm?"
"Farm, sir? Why, faith, sir, there'd be no farms hereabouts. Perhaps if you were 
to go down the road toward Franktown, a day's walk, perhaps...."
"Blast it, where can I get a horse quickly?"
The man shook his head helplessly. "If I only knew, good sir, I would tell you 
in an instant, but I can think of no place nearby where you could find another 
mount."
Mac slumped, defeated. "That's it, then. 'Tis over. Black Jack has won. And I... 
I have lost everything that matters to me."
And then, he heard a horse's snort and the creaking, rattling sounds of a wagon 
approaching. He spun around and saw Harlan the Peddlar coming down the road from 
the Great River, whistling to himself.
Mac ran toward the wagon as it approached the inn. Harlan saw him approaching 
and reached for a vial of the Elixir of Stench, just to be on the safe side.
"Hallo, peddlar!" Mac cried. "Have you passed a party of armed men on the road, 
perhaps a dozen or more?"
"Aye, that I did, stranger," Harlan said. "Just a short while ago, I saw them 
heading back the way I came, toward the Great River, bearing captives slung on 
horseback. Say, that's a fine collection of knives you have slung across your 
chest there. As it happens, I represent an armorer of note-"
"Get down from your wagon!"
"What?"
Mac leaped up on the seat beside him just as Harlan drew back his hand to hurl 
the Elixir of Stench. Instinctively, Mac grabbed his arm. The two wrestled for a 
moment, then the vial dropped and shattered on the floorboards of the wagon.
"Gahhhhhl" cried Harlan, clapping his hands over his nose.
"By the gods!" cried Mac, reeling from the awful stench.
Hacking and coughing, Harlan fell back into the wagon. Mac grabbed the reins 
and, holding his breath, whipped up the horses and turned the wagon around. Then 
he cracked the whip and, holding his nose, set off in pursuit of Black Jack and 
his men.
The bounty hunters reined in on the rise above the banks of the Great River. 
"We've made it!" one of them cried, a wide grin on his face. "There's the ferry, 
right below!"
"Aye, once we're across and the ferry lines are cut, we can take our ease and 
make camp by the riverbank," Black Jack said. He looked down at Shannon, tightly 
bound and slung across his saddle in front of him, on her stomach. He slapped 
her backside. "You're going to make me a rich man, my lass. I'll be buying a 
nice, new suit of clothes to attend your execution."
"My head isn't on the block, yet," Shannon said.
Black Jack caressed her buttocks. "Aye, that's the spirit, lass. Defiant to the 
bitter end. They'll love that in the square at Pittsburgh, when they lop your 
head off. Give 'em a good show. Though, truly, 'twill be a shame to despoil such 
a body. What a waste."
"It need not be a waste," said Shannon softly. "I am your prisoner and you can 
do with me what you will."
Black Jack threw back his head and laughed. "Waste not your wiles on me, my 
sweet. True,, I find myself sorely tempted by your flesh, but the bounty on your 
head tempts me far more."
"I am bound both hand and foot," said Shannon. "What have you to fear from me?"
"I am not such a fool as to risk finding that out," Black Jack replied. "If I 
was to have my way with you, and not share you with the others, they would 
resent it. And if I was to let them have their turn, 'twould distract them, 
surely, and perhaps give you an opportunity. Nay, I shall regretfully deny 
myself the pleasure, and look forward instead to the greater pleasure of the 
reward that you shall bring me, and the fame that will go with it."
"You are a cowardly cur, Black Jack."
"Nay, merely a cautious one," he said with a grin. "Come on, men! The ferry 
awaits!"
He spurred his horse and galloped down the road leading to the riverbank and the 
ferry crossing. His men followed behind him, trailing the three horses to which 
Long Bill, Fifer Bob, and Silent Fred were bound.
" Tis all your fault, Bill!" Fifer Bob moaned as he was painfully jounced by the 
movement of the horse. "I don't know why I ever listened to you! See what you 
have brought us to!"
"Oh, shut up!" said Long Bill.
Silent Fred, as usual, remained morosely silent, and truly, there wasn't really 
much to say in such a situation. The bounty hunters rode down to the riverbank 
and reined in at the ferry crossing. The ferry raft was moored across from them, 
on the opposite bank of the river. Black Jack dismounted and cupped his hands 
around his mouth.
"Halloooo!"
From the opposite bank, the ferryman replied, and in a moment, they saw the raft 
move out from the other shore. Black Jack came around to the side of his horse, 
took a handful of Shannon's hair, and jerked her head up so he could see her 
face. She spat at him.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand, then hauled off and cuffed her with 
his fist, bloodying her mouth. "Aye, when they cut that pretty head off, I'll be 
in the front row to watch," he said. "My only regret is that Mac the Knife will 
miss the show. Pity."
"Mac the Knife?" said one of the other men. "What has he to do with this?"
Black Jack held Shannon by the hair and touched the dagger pin fastened to her 
breast. "He has this to do with it," he said.
"She is Sean MacGregor's woman?" one of the others said uncertainly. "You said 
nothing about MacGregor being part of this."
"What are you afraid of?" sneered Black Jack. "We'll cross the river and be on 
our way to Pittsburgh long before MacGregor even finds our trail. And even if he 
were to catch us, you think he could stand against all of us together?"
"Perhaps not," said one of the men, "but he may follow us to Pittsburgh and make 
inquiries, and find out who was in the party that brought his woman in. Then 
he'll be trackin' us down, one at a time."
There was uneasy mumbling among the men.
"That's right!" Shannon shouted. "Mac will never rest till he avenges me! He'll 
kill each and every last one of you!"
"Quiet, you!" said Black Jack, smacking her across the face, backhanded.
"She's right," one of the others said. "Mac the Knife has killed every man he's 
ever stalked. I didn't know he was involved when I signed on for this. I want no 
part of it."
"Nor I," said another.
"You are already part of it, all of you!" Black Jack said. "Ride out now, and 
you forfeit your share of the reward. And MacGregor may find out who you are 
just the same, and then he'll be on your trail and you'll have nothing to show 
for it! Continue on, and you'll receive your fat share of the bounty, and then 
together we can take care of Mac the Knife. 'Tis the only way to make sure he 
cannot track us down one at a time."
"You should have told us, Jack. We didn't know about MacGregor. You tricked us."
"You all willingly signed on for this!" Black Jack said angrily. "No one forced 
you into it. Besides, what are you afraid of? MacGregor's not so much. I myself 
crossed swords with him and lived to tell the tale. Had he not fled from me, the 
silver dagger of the top assassin would now be on my breast, as it rightfully 
should be!" He tore the pin off Shannon's tunic and fastened it onto his own. 
"There's what I think of Sean MacGregor! If he wants this back, he can damn well 
come and try to take it!"
The ferry was almost to the shore now.
"Any man who wishes to turn tail like a rat and run, then do it now!" Black Jack 
said. "And be damned for a coward. The rest of us will divvy up your share of 
the reward!"
There was a moment's silence, then one of them said, "I didn't come all this way 
for nothing."
"Nor I," said another.
"Very well, then," said Black Jack. "Half of us will go on the first crossing, 
the rest will follow after. When we all reach the other shore, we can cut the 
ferry ropes, make camp, and rest awhile. And thumb our noses at anyone who tries 
to follow."
As the ferry touched the shore, Black Jack led his horse down, with Shannon 
strapped across it, and got aboard the raft. "Bring down the other prisoners," 
he said.
"And have you cut the ropes once you reach the other side?" one of the others 
said. "No chance. Half of us will go along with you and the wench. The rest of 
us will remain here with the other three, as a security that you send the ferry 
back for us."
"A fine and trusting lot you are," Jack said with a scowl. "Very well, then. 
Have it your way. But be quick about it."
Six of the men dismounted and led their horses onto the raft while the others 
remained behind with the three brigands to wait for the next trip. The ferryman 
and his assistant, long accustomed to all sorts of unsavory types, kept their 
own counsel. Once everyone was aboard, they began to pull the ferry back across, 
using the lines. The other bounty hunters waited on the riverbank. The raft was 
about halfway across when a cloud of dust up on the rise, on the road leading to 
the riverbank, caught one of the men's attention.
"Look there," he said, pointing.
Black Jack looked and, a moment later, he saw a wagon come into view, make the 
turn, and start down the slope. " 'Tis the peddlar we passed earlier," he said, 
recognizing the wagon.
"Why's he coming back this way?"
"Perhaps he lost something on the road," said Jack.
"He's comin' fast."
"Aye," Jack said with a frown. "He is at that." He squinted hard, trying to make 
out the driver.
The wagon came straight at the other group of bounty hunters waiting on the 
riverbank. They had turned to watch its approach, and suddenly Jack saw one of 
them clutch his chest and fall. And then another. And another. The driver of the 
wagon had dropped the reins, and as the horses ran free, he stood in the box, 
throwing knives at the remaining bounty hunters, who had scattered.
"MacGregor!" said Black Jack.
"You said he'd never catch us!" one of the others said accusingly.
"I don't know how the devil he could have gotten here so fast," Black Jack 
replied.
"Now what do we do?"
Black Jack sneered. "We cut our losses and make the best of it," he said. "If 
some of the others manage to kill him and survive, everyone's share will be that 
much greater for the ones who've fallen. If not, we simply cut the ferry ropes 
and go on. The wench is worth ten times more man the other three combined."
He held his dagger to the ferryman's back. "Pull, damn you! Pull!"
Mac leaped down from the wagon and hurled another knife even as he landed, 
drawing it from his bandolier and throwing it with lightning speed, all in one 
motion. It buried itself to the hilt in one man's chest, and then the others 
were upon him. Four had fallen, but three remained, and they rushed at him 
together, with swords drawn. He drew his own blade and engaged them, dagger in 
one hand, sword in the other.
He parried one thrust and ran the man through, but at the same time caught the 
flash of another blade descending in a cutting stroke. He twisted to one side 
and felt a sharp, searing pain along his shoulder. No time to think about it, 
one down, two to go, and they were pressing him for all they were worth. He 
parried one stroke with his sword, struck the other blade down with his dagger, 
but the pain lanced through his arm and he could not hold onto it. His dagger 
fell, and he retreated, simultaneously trying to parry two blades at once. They 
sensed his weakness and moved in for the kill. Suddenly, a glass vial shattered 
at their feet and Mac's antagonists instinctively recoiled from the incredible, 
unholy stench. Another vial fell and shattered. Harlan was up on the box of the 
wagon, throwing vials of the elixir. Mac plunged his sword into a bounty 
hunter's stomach and the other one took off running, holding his nose and 
gagging. Fighting down the gorge rising in his throat, Mac drew a knife and 
hurled it. It struck the fleeing bounty hunter right between the shoulder blades 
and he fell, dead.
"I'm much obliged to you," Mac called to the peddlar. "But did you have to throw 
so many? S'trewth! The stench would fell a horse!"
The peddlar simply shrugged.
Mac turned and gazed out toward the ferry raft. It was three-quarters of the way 
across the river. He swore. He could swim for it, but he would never reach them 
before they reached the shore. And with his injured shoulder, he was not even 
sure he could prevail against the current. They would mount up and ride, and 
even if he could reach the opposite shore, he'd have no horse with which to give 
pursuit. He threw his sword down on the ground and cried out in exasperation. 
And, out of nowhere, an answering cry came, but it was a cry that issued from no 
human throat.
If he had known what a locomotive whistle sounded like, he might have thought it 
sounded just like that, but since he had never heard a locomotive whistle, he 
could not possibly mistake it for anything else but what it was... me angry 
roaring of a dragon.
He looked up and saw the huge beast, its giant wings fanned out full length, its 
tail streaming behind it, coming down out of the sun in a swooping glide, and 
astride its back, he could see a human figure, holding on for dear life.
"A dragon!" cried the peddlar. "We are done for! We'll be roasted!"
"Nay, 'tis Doc!" Mac shouted.
"The sorcerer from Brigand's Roost?"
"Aye, none other!"
Aboard the raft, they saw the dragon diving down toward them, belching fire, and 
the bounty hunters panicked. As a gout of flame hit the water just behind them 
and sent up clouds of steam, several of the men leaped, terror-stricken, into 
the water and started swimming for it.
"No man can fight a dragon!" one of the bounty hunters cried. "We'll have to 
swim for it!"
"We're almost to the shore!" said Black Jack.
"Are you mad? We'll never make it!"
The ferryman and his assistant jumped over the side.
"Grab the ropes and pull!" Black Jack commanded.
"Pull for yourself!"
The remaining men leaped into the river.
"Blast it, I can't swim!" cried Jack.
The dragon came swooping down over the raft and Black Jack ducked down as its 
talons raked the air above him. It soared up again, rising up beyond the 
treetops, and Jack grabbed the rope and started pulling for dear life.
"You'll never make it," Shannon said.
"If I die in flame, then you roast with me!" Black Jack cried, heaving on the 
rope for all that he was worth.
The dragon was coming around again, its roars filling the air. It belched smoke 
and fire and a jet of flame boiled the water near the raft and sent steaming 
clouds rising up into the sky. The dragon swooped down low, its talons reaching 
for Black Jack, but he ducked down beneath his horse, using it and Shannon for a 
shield, and the dragon soared up into the sky again.
Black Jack grabbed the rope and started pulling. The raft touched the shore and 
he fought to control the terrified horse as he led it onto shore. The animal 
shied, its eyes rolling, but Black Jack held onto the reins and swung up into 
the saddle.
"You'd best cut me loose and drop me, or you'll never have a chance," said 
Shannon.
"I'll still have a chance, with you as hostage," Jack replied, spurring his 
horse. The animal needed no encouragement. It took off at a dead run down the 
road into the woods.
"I cannot breathe fire at him in those trees," said Rory, flying high overhead. 
"It would set the entire forest ablaze."
"Set me down ahead of him!" cried Brewster.
"Are you certain?"
"No. But what other choice do we have?"
As Black Jack rode full speed down the forest road, he kept anxiously glancing 
overhead. The treetops were effectively screening him from view. So long as he 
kept to the trees, the dragon couldn't see him, and the forest stretched on for 
miles. Ahead of him, there was an open crossroads, but he could plunge off the 
road into the trees and work his way around it, to keep himself out of the open. 
He heard a great rush of wind as a huge shadow passed by overhead, and he heard 
the dragon's roar, but no attack came.
"Roar all you like, you great worm!" he said. " 'Twill take more than an 
overgrown lizard to stop Black Jack!"
The crossroads was just ahead... and standing in the middle of the road, 
directly in his path, was a man, dressed in a strange-looking surcoat. He seemed 
to be unarmed. He was holding his arms up in front of him, as if commanding him 
to stop. The fool, thought Jack, I'll ride right over him.
As the horseman barrelled straight on toward him, Brewster held his revolver in 
both hands, thinking back and trying to concentrate on the time when the 
EnGulfCo CEO had taken him to the firing range, after presenting him with a 
matched set of Smith & Wessons. The CEO was an avid target shooter, but it was 
the only time Brewster had ever fired a gun.
"Now, just take it nice and easy and don't get excited," the CEO had told him, 
after showing him the proper grip and stance. "If you've got time, and you want 
to make sure to place your shot as accurately as possible, fire the gun 
single-action, by manually cocking (he hammer back with your thumb. Line up the 
front sight so it's squarely in the middle of the rear-sight notch, and so the 
top of the front sight is exactly level with the top of the rear sight. Push 
forward slightly with your right arm, and pull back slightly with your left, to 
give yourself a nice, steady shooting platform. Don't use a lot of muscular 
tension, though. Keep the gun steady and make sure it isn't weaving about. Once 
you've got the sights lined up, focus on the front sight, not the target, so 
that the front sight is nice and sharp and the target is just slightly blurred. 
Place the front sight just below the bull's-eye, take a breath, relax, exhale, 
and gently squeeze, don't jerk the trigger."
The gun fired. The .357 Magnum jacketed hollowpoint slug struck Black Jack high 
in the left shoulder and knocked him right off his horse, passing completely 
through him. The horse reared up and Brewster quickly holstered the gun and 
raised his arms, standing in front of the horse and hoping the animal wouldn't 
strike him down with its hooves.
"Easy, boy! Easy! Easy!"
He managed to catch the horse's reins and hold onto them as the animal reared up 
again, and then he pulled them tight and moved in close to the horse, speaking 
softly, gently, trying to soothe the beast. In a few moments, the horse managed 
to calm down, though its eyes were still wide and frightened, and Brewster 
stepped close to it, gentling it, speaking softly and reassuringly.
"There, there, boy, it's all right, it's all right."
When he had the horse calmed down, he slipped his arm through the reins and came 
around beside it. Shannon looked up at him weakly.
"Shannon! Are you all right?"
"What kept you?" she said with a smile.
He cut her bonds and helped her down off the horse. She tried to stand, but her 
legs buckled beneath her.
"Don't try to stand," said Brewster. "Here, let me help you."
He took her arm and put it around his shoulders, holding onto her hand and 
supporting her with his other arm.
"The others?" she said.
"They're all right, I think," said Brewster. "Here, let's get off to the side of 
the road here so you can sit and rest."
He helped her down and she leaned back against a tree trunk wearily. She sighed 
and groaned. "I feel as if every bone in my body has been shaken loose." She 
looked up at him and smiled. "I owe you my life, Doc."
Brewster smiled sheepishly. "You'd have done the same for me."
"Perhaps," she said.
"Perhaps?"
She grinned. "After this, for certain. I will never forget how you stood up to 
Black Jack's charge and hurled your magic thunderbolts."
"My magic... ?" Brewster glanced down at his bolstered gun. "Oh. That."
" 'Tis a truly brave and fearsome sorcerer you are, Doc. And I shall always be 
grateful to you." She reached up, took his face between her hands, and gently 
kissed him on the lips.
Suddenly, they heard a horse neigh and Brewster turned around to see Black Jack 
swing up into the saddle and gallop off toward the crossroads. He jumped up and 
pulled his gun from its holster, ran out into the middle of the road, and drew a 
bead on Black Jack's rapidly retreating back. And then he lowered the gun.
"Why did you not kill him?" Shannon asked.
Brewster shook his head. "I thought I had, at first. I guess I only wounded 
him."
"You should have finished him," said Shannon.
"I couldn't shoot a man in the back," said Brewster. He glanced down at the gun. 
"I'm amazed I was able to shoot him at all."
She shook her head. " Tis a strange man you are, Brewster Doc. But 'tis a 
privilege to call you friend."
"Rory can pick us up at the crossroads and take us back across the river," 
Brewster said, "but I'm afraid we'll have to walk there. Think you can make it?"
"After the ride I've had, I think that I would much prefer to walk," said 
Shannon.
He helped her to the crossroads, where Rory picked them up and flew them back 
across the river, with Shannon holding onto Brewster for dear life, terrified 
until Rory set them down again on the opposite shore. Brewster thanked the 
dragon and Rory said, "Think nothing of it, old chap. It was great fun." Then he 
sprang up into the air and was soon no more than a faint dot receding into the 
distant sky.
"I knew Doc wouldn't let us down!" said Fifer Bob as he came running up with 
Long Bill and Silent Fred. "He and Mac have saved the day! We're back among our 
friends again, and free!"
"Aye, 'tis back you are," said Shannon, "but take your fill of freedom for the 
present, for when we get back to the Roost, I'll have the three of you in stocks 
until you rot!"
The three brigands looked horrified. "Oh, woe is us!" wailed Fifer Bob. "I can't 
take no more of those awful urchins! Oh, why, oh, why did I ever let you talk me 
into going along with your greedy, devious ways? 'Tis all your fault, Long Bill! 
Tis all your fault!"
"Oh, shut up!" said Long Bill.
Mac came running up to Shannon. "Shannon! By the gods, I thought I'd lost you!"
He threw his arms around her, and she recoiled in horror, pushing him away. 
"Blind me, what's that awful stench?" she cried, gagging.
Mac grinned weakly. " 'Tis my new fragrance. Like it?"
"Surely you jest! Doc, you wouldn't have any of your magic soap about" you, 
would you?"
"I had a whole supply," the peddlar said, "but I fear I'm all sold out. In fact, 
I'm sold out of all the goods!"
"What goods?" said Shannon. And then she noticed Mac's wound. "Mac! You're 
hurt!"
" 'Tis but a scratch," he said. "Come, the peddlar will take us back to 
Brigand's Roost. We shall probably run into the others on the way."
"Aye, and it will give me an opportunity to discuss some business ventures with 
you," Harlan said. "I have some ideas that should prove quite profitable for all 
of us, I think."
"Another time, Peddlar, if 'tis all the same to you," said Shannon, getting into 
the back of the wagon with Brewster. "Right now, all I want to do is sleep."
Mac got in beside her.
"Mac," she said, wrinkling her nose, "would you mind very much sitting up 
front?"
And so, as Brewster and Shannon rest in the back of the wagon while Mac sits up 
front with Harlan reluctantly listening to a lecture on the money to be made in 
real estate, we take our leave of our intrepid characters, but only for a short 
while, for we'll return soon with our next bizarre installment. (After all, even 
narrators have to take a short break every now and then, and attend to such 
mundane matters as paying bills and balancing the checkbook.)
Will Colin Hightower, relentless newshawk kidnapped by the naked wench from 
Pittsburgh, find a way out of his embarrassing and possibly dangerous 
predicament and get to the bottom of the strange phenomenon he is investigating, 
or will he wind up with a tabloid headline all his own? Will Marvin Brewster 
ever find a way to get back his missing time machine from the most powerful mage 
in all the twenty-seven kingdoms? Will Shannon and MacGregor wed, and start a 
school for fighters and assassins in Brigand's Roost, so they can get the awful 
urchins off the streets, or will Mac's new fragrance force an indefinite 
postponement of the nuptials?
Will Harlan the Peddlar start a franchise operation and develop the first 
successful pyramid scheme in the twenty-seven kingdoms, or will the Better 
Business Guild cut him off at the knees? And will Brigand's Roost experience an 
unprecedented influx of new settlers, fleeing Pittsburgh in search of freedom 
from oppression, new business opportunities, and a relaxed, suburban lifestyle, 
or will they take one look at the grubby little village and decide to go back 
and take their chances with Sheriff Waylon and his deputies? And what of the 
plans The Stealers Guild is hatching for a revolution?
Will Warrick Morgannan discover the secret of Brewster's time machine on his 
own, or will he embark upon a relentless search for that machine's creator, 
having overheard his name by eavesdropping on the narrator again? And will he 
ever forgive Teddy the Troll for being the unwitting cat's-paw of your faithful 
narrator, or will Teddy have a nervous breakdown and start looking for an 
exorcist?
And what of faithful Pamela? Will she survive the devious machinations of a 
huge, multinational conglomerate and succeed in replicating Brewster's time 
machine, or will all her efforts be doomed to dismal failure? (Hint: maybe not.) 
For the answers to those and other irrelevant questions, be sure to join us once 
again for our next exasperating episode, The Ambivalent Magician, or Shannon and 
the Seven Dwarfs.