'About an hour.' Rhun took a seat against the wall beside her, taking advantage of the tiny bit of shade. He pulled the cap off the waterskin he was carrying and took a long swig, wetting his face and neck in the process. 'Tell me something.' His thoughts wandered back to Ray, as he shook off the excess water. 'Have I done something to your boyfriend that I'm not aware of?

He sure doesn't seem to like me very much.' This bothered Rhun, as in Ray's past life in Gwynedd they'd been lifelong friends. Three years had passed since they'd met in the twenty-first century, and they hadn't warmed to each other at all.

'I had a crush on you when we first met,' Rhiannon announced casually, forcing her brother to smile.

'Really?' This was news to Rhun. 'I'm flattered.'

'Ray was so jealous,' Rhiannon laughed, pausing from her task a moment as she recalled, 'and probably still is.

Never mind about the fact that he still has a thing for Mother.' She rolled her eyes, in a mocking fashion.

Rhun was not really surprised to learn this. 'Bryce was infatuated with her too. His whole life in fact.'

Rhiannon's cheer was dampened as she picked up on the wonderful memories that were flitting through her brother's head. 'You miss him,' she stated, feeling the sorrowful yearning that welled deep within him suddenly.

Rhun nodded, then shrugged, trying to suppress the lump that was forming in his throat. She sensed his inner conflict, and tears moistened both their eyes.

Rhun so wanted to accept this new circumstance and yet the memories of the good times he and Bryce had once shared were tearing him apart. 'I'm so sorry, Rhun.

I didn't even think. I've been so wrapped up in getting what I want, that I didn't even consider that I might be destroying a friendship in the process.'

'No, Rhiannon, don't blame yourself. Things are just different now. Bryce is a whole different person.'

'It doesn't have to be that way.' She decided to try and resolve the conflict she'd started. 'I shall talk to him.' She took up position and went back to her surveillance.

'If you think it will make any difference.' Rhun wondered if it really would.

Rhiannon gave half a chuckle at something she was viewing through the binoculars, then her amusement was cut short. 'Oh shit!'

'What is it?' Rhun stood to look down at the street below.

A large, dark-haired man, dressed as a local but all in black, exited the hotel alone.

'I thought the Dragon Slayer had walked right out of the computer and onto the streets of Baghdad, then I realised what that means.'

'Doc's changed form!' they both concluded at once.

'Good call.' Rhun was amazed she'd picked up on it.

'Can you psych out of him where he's going from this distance?'

Rhiannon was already focused on her target, who was climbing into a car. She was startled when he re-emerged to look around the street. 'O-oh.' She ducked to avoid being spotted, pulling her brother down with her. 'Jesus, Rhun, he sensed me. This is not good.'

With no one tutoring him in the greater mysteries, Rhun could hardly believe Doc had become so accomplished in just three years. 'I'm going after him.

You know what to do.'

Rhiannon, still horrified, gave her brother a nod and he vanished. She dared a peek over the wall to the street below, to find Doc's new persona had climbed into the car. She watched as the car pulled out into the street. Rhun's vehicle did likewise and followed Doc.

Satisfied that all was going smoothly, Rhiannon prepared to transport herself back to the Goddess to report that Merlin I and II hadn't made the party on time. Then the rooftop became awhirl with wind that whipped Rhiannon's long dark hair about her face. As the whirlwind died away, Brian's upper body emerged out of thin air about ten feet off the ground.

'Need a lift?'

Rhiannon laughed as she made for the invisible craft, instructing, 'Follow that car.'

Tory didn't enjoy flying Merlin through the city. The radical changes in the topography, the buildings and the various forms of transport on the streets, made for a very hairy ride.

Nevertheless, Teo seemed to be revelling in the bumps along the way, as he watched the cars in question through the headset that controlled the camera in Merlin II.

As they approached the hire car Rhun drove, Tory sent her son a mental note to advise him of their presence. Rhun gave them the thumbs-up to confirm he'd recieved her message and turned the car around to discontinue his pursuit.

'He's all ours,' Teo informed.

On the ground, one had to pass many Iraqi troops and roadblocks to exit the city. Travelling outside Baghdad still required official permission and, in some cases, an official escort. But, unlike everybody else, Doc seemed to have no trouble obtaining clearance to move on.

They followed Doc's vehicle through the outskirts of the city, past the farmlands that lined the banks of the Tigris and out onto the flat sun-baked plains. Now that they had entered the wide open spaces, Tory gained altitude. There was hardly a soul to been seen way out here, so Doc's vehicle wasn't difficult to keep in sight.

As did central Australia, the barren desert they crossed had a mysterious timeless quality; little of this landscape had changed since the God's had frequented it. But this place lacked the rich warm colours of Uluru, and so appeared harsher and more forebidding. The area pulsated with the energies Tory had come to associate with ley lines, but where Uluru vibrated with positive energy, the eons of war and strife in the Middle East had manifested themselves in the landscape.

'Looks like he's heading for that mountain range yonder.' Teo voiced his observation.

'Fabulous. Mountains,' Tory commented, none too keen on the idea of flying over more unpredictable terrain.

But the road led into a deep chasm between the mountains that, after a mile or so, came to a dead end.

The vehicle did a circuit around the dirt clearing surrounded on all sides by towering rocky cliffs. Tory figured Doc was probably checking to ensure no one had followed him. Then, before she had a chance to consider what he might be doing way out here in the middle of nowhere, he drove the car straight into the cavern wall. Doc, and the car, vanished.

'Now, there's something you don't see every day.'

Teo disengaged the viewing headset.

'It would seem my father and Taliesin are not the only ones with such retreats.' Tory did a circuit of the clearing, heading back into the chasm with Merlin I right behind her. Halfway down the gorge, its rocky walls parted wide, leaving a large clearing on both sides of the road.

Tory settled the craft down to a gentle landing. The sandstorm beside her was visual confirmation that Brian had landed also.

It was coming onto evening by the time Rhun returned the hire car and joined the others in the chasm.

Rhiannon was voicing her observations concerning Doc's astounding leap in psychic expertise, which seemed to have everyone worried.

'Perhaps we should abort.' Tory was clearly ill-at-ease about what she'd learned. 'It's not worth getting caught over. If Doc has become as accomplished as you say, he'll be able to siphon information from us faster than Floyd sucks it from the internet.'

'High risk, high gain.' Rhun added his two cents worth. 'Somebody has to find out what he's up to. If not us, then who?'

Tory could appreciate Rhun's view, but the stakes were too high. 'If you can think of a way to guarantee that we will not give away the location of our base ...'

'I have,' he intervened, calmly. 'I'll just wipe all memory of it from your mind, as I did with Rhiannon for her last mission.'

'Who's going to wipe it from your memory?' Teo wondered out loud.

Rhun shrugged, 'Two of us should really stay here and keep an eye on our transport, so I guess I volunteer.

I'm not a great pilot, but if worst comes to worst I could psychokinetically transport Merlin out of here.' Rhun looked to Teo, believing he should be the other person to stay.

'Aw, bugger.' Teo saw the sense of it. After what he'd just heard about Doc, he conceded he might be a little out of his depth on this one.

Rhun gave Teo a thump on the shoulder for foregoing the adventure. 'Alright, it's settled then.' He sat his mother down in front of him and begin the hypnosis.

Once snapped from her trance, Tory didn't feel any different. Yet it made her tremendously confident to discover that when questioned about the whereabouts of their base she couldn't for the life of her remember.

'That's amazing!' She racked her brain. 'Absolutely nothing.' Tory was even more astounded when she watched the hypnotic procedure performed on Brian. It took all of five minutes to wipe the information clean out of his memory.

It wasn't long before Brian, Tory and Rhiannon found themselves creeping down the dark canyon towards the clearing.

'This places gives me the creeps,' Brian whispered with a shudder. It wasn't that the landscape was threatening, or that it had spooky noises. It just felt ominous.

'It's been empowered by negative energy to be sure.'

Tory seconded.

'That foreboding-type vibe is getting stronger the nearer we get to the entrance,' added Rhiannon, relieved that she wasn't the only one who noticed the repelling force.

'Great.' Brian forced a smile, considering he was happier when he'd been blissfully unaware of all Otherworldly phenomena.

Armed with their Stormers, and a roll of gaffer tape, the three of them cautiously approached the spot where Doc's vehicle had vanished. Night had fallen, but the full moon lit the rock face they sought to penetrate.

They kept low, hugging the canyon wall, in the hope of avoiding any electronic surveillance.

'Perhaps we should go get Merlin, and fly in,'

Rhiannon suggested, seeing this as the only way of proceeding without being detected.

'And risk losing one of our craft in an ambush?' Tory shook her head. 'There has to be another way.'

Invisibility was not a talent Tory had mastered, or even considered, but there was a means to achieve such a feat. One of the thirteen treasures of Britain, the Mantle of Gwydion, was capable of providing its wearer with such a service. Tory had used this garment, handcrafted by the Gods, to render herself invisible once before. The siege at Aberffraw that had cost Gwynedd the life of its King, Caswallon, seemed an eternity ago now. Yet the treasure that had kept secret Tory's participation in the battle, remained clearly etched in her memory.

Tory focused on the details of the image in her mind and, holding out her arms before her, closed her eyes to will forth the Mantle of Gwydion from her father's cave at Dinas Emrys.

Brian watched his sister's movements with growing interest, then suddenly Tory announced: 'Ta-da!' She whipped a cloak out of thin air.

'Great, here I am trying to solve our problem, and you're worried about getting cold.' Brian scoffed.

'Take a chill pill, bro.' Tory reversed the cloak inside out, swinging it round her shoulders, whereupon she vanished.

'Ha!' Rhiannon gasped, astounded.

'Tory?' Brian wondered if she was still with them, the fact that he couldn't see her made him uneasy.

'Yeah, what?'

Tory had moved. Brian turned abruptly to face her as she removed the cloak.

'Get the picture?'

He did, and Brian's sudden understanding made him grin.

Shrouded by the mantle, the three of them passed through the cavern wall and into a long, dark, earthen corridor that sloped progressively downward. The tunnel was lit at ten metre intervals by electric lights imbedded in the walls.

'No wonder Doc drove in,' Brian uttered, softly.

'How deep do you think it goes?'

Tory shrugged. 'Let's find out.'

The night sky above the canyon was ablaze with stars, and it seemed to Teo that he'd been staring at them for ages. Rhun was using the only pair of binoculars that was equipped with night vision to keep watch, so there was precious little for Teo to do. He was bored, and when Teo was bored he liked to chat. Trouble was, apart from Rhun trying to ward him off Tory, they never really had very much to say to each other. The silence really started to bug him after a while, and as he'd thought of a question he'd always wanted to ask Rhun, now seemed a good opportunity. 'Have you been shitting me all this time about your father still being alive?'

'If he were dead, Teo, I'd have no reason to lie to you about it. I want to see my mother happy, just as much as you do.' Rhun looked to Teo, who still appeared reluctant to believe him. 'Think back to a few weeks after we procured Doc's hard drive, and mother was mysteriously struck unconscious for four days ...

remember? Didn't you wonder why?'

'I thought she was just having another cosmic episode. Everyone was a bit vague about it when I asked, so I figured nobody really knew.'

'She was visiting my father.' Rhun levelled with him. 'Well, her astral body was.'

'Visiting him! Visiting him where?'

Rhun pointed to a star twinkling brightly on the horizon in the east. 'There, the Sirius system, approximately eight point seven light-years away.' Rhun inwardly hoped to one day accompany his father there.

'But don't think that means he's not watching ... my father's talents far exceed my own.'

Teo sat thoughtful for a time, then dragged himself up to his feet. 'I'm going to make a coffee,' he felt his way towards the invisible ladder of Merlin II. 'You want one?'

'No, thanks.'

Making coffee in the dark kept Teo amused for a while.

He stirred in an unknown quantity of milk, before wiping the spoon and returning it to the storage hatch provided. 'Ahh, caffeine,' he sighed, planting himself in the co-pilot's seat and raising the brew to his mouth for a sip.

From the darkened valley beyond the large, front porthole of Merlin II gunfire lit up the night. Teo splattered boiling coffee all over himself, as bullets ricocheted off the invisible metal body of the craft in which he sat. 'Fu..' he forced himself to silence. He brushed off the boiling liquid as if it were lukewarm, and keeping low, in case the next round of bullets penetrated one of the portholes, repositioned himself where he could view Rhun out front.

Rhun had dropped the binoculars and had his arms raised in surrender. He slowly got to his feet, waiting to be apprehended.

Teo could vaguely make out a lone figure, advancing towards them. Again the darkness lit up as shots were fired. Rhun did not have a chance to flinch from his stance before several bullets ploughed into his torso and blew him right off his feet. 'Jesus Christ almighty,' Teo uttered under his breath, fumbling to pull the Stormer from his belt.

Even as the sniper reached Rhun sprawled on the ground, it was difficult to make him out as he was dressed entirely in black. His eyes were masked by some sort of radical electronic glasses. Of a sleek wrap-around design, these were unlike any eye wear Teo had ever seen. The lenses that sat over both eye sockets gave the gunman damn fine night vision, that much was plainly obvious.

Rhun lay in wait. He allowed his attacker to kick his body a couple of times, before grabbing hold of his legs and toppling him to the ground. The gun was sent flying in the scuffle, and as the gunman booted Rhun away and made a dash for the weapon, a laser bullet slammed into the ground nearby and he froze.

'The next one won't miss.'