Steven spat a mouthful of tea on the floor. 'What the Hell-?'

'Don't ask.' Garec shook his head.

Mrs Winter ignored them. 'Mark, the Ronan prince-'

Steven wiped his mouth, then finished Lessek's thought, 'And Milla, the heir apparent to the Larion Senate, the prodigy.'

'Not just Milla,' Hannah said.

'Certainly not.' Mrs Winter smiled and finally removed her glasses.

'What?' Steven asked, 'what am I missing?'

'In your pocket,' Hannah said. 'You were willing to believe that Mark was drawn to Idaho Springs by the power of Lessek's key, but you never bothered to wonder about yourself.' She took a seat beside her mother; they huddled together under a blanket. 'After hearing of your exploits from Brexan and Gilmour, I put two and two together.'

'Two and two?' Steven said. 'Where'd the other two come from?'

'From Alen.'

'Alen?' Steven unfolded the sheets of paper Hannah had given him that morning. They were printed out from an Internet cafe, somewhere in western Massachusetts. Across the bottom of each page was a common footer: a web domain. 'What is this?' Steven said, turning the first page over several times, trying to make sense of an ornate grid filled with unfamiliar names.

'It's from a genealogical website, a database,' Jennifer said. 'Look at it closely. What do you see?'

'It looks like a printout of a family line, originating somewhere in northern England a couple of centuries ago.'

'Look at the generations spanning the middle page there.' Hannah pointed at the second sheaf. 'The stuff between 1846 and 1881 ...'

'There's a family, Wakefield, from Bradford who married into the Kirtland family from Durham. They had four children, three boys and one girl, who in turn went on to have, two, three, five, holy shit, eleven eleven grandchildren. It was a rutting brood but so what?' grandchildren. It was a rutting brood but so what?'

'So look again,' Hannah said, winking at Mark and adding, 'He's as thick as a bag of broken bricks sometimes.'

'Tell me about it,' Mark groaned.

'Um, all right,' Steven reread the page. 'Whatshername from Bradford marries Kirtland from Durham and they have four, oh, wait, no, five! They have five kids and the last one that's the one I missed. Hold on.' Mark reached for the pages and Steven relinquished all but the one charting the family line through the mid-1800s. 'She doesn't belong here. Who is she?' He looked pointedly at Hannah. 'The woman who married Thomas Robert Taylor of London in 1892 and moved to America, New Jersey and then to Ohio, before dying at the age of 87 in Denver, Colorado. Who was that woman? My great-grandmother, Margaret Rena Kirtland Taylor?'

'Yes, she was your great-grandmother,' Hannah explained. 'Her name was Reia, not Rena. She was the daughter of Alen Jasper and Pikan Tettarak, the offspring of two Larion sorcerers, and the direct source of your power.'

'Holy shit!' Mark yelled, ripping the key page from his friend's hand.

Steven didn't seem to notice; instead he stared at Hannah, blinking, looking dumbfounded. 'It- No, I can't ... It came from the staff; it had to!'

'No, it didn't,' Garec said. 'Mark and I have been trying to tell you since the fjord, since Traver's Notch. The magic didn't come from the staff; the staff just brought it to life. It was there all along. I knew it the night we spent in the cavern beneath the river.'

'Cold beer and oil changes for $26.99,' Mark said. 'We were seeing across the Fold.'

'Just like you did today.' Mrs Winter took his hand. 'Milla is not the only heir to the Larion Brotherhood, Steven, you are as well. You will both bring leadership and knowledge to the Larion Senate: Milla is a prodigious talent, certainly, but you you are the Senate's legacy.' are the Senate's legacy.'

'Old magic,' Steven said, 'that's what Gilmour called these abilities, nonverbal spells and such.'

'Yes, he did.' Mrs Winter smiled.

'Did he know?'

'The clock.'

'Sonofabitch.' Steven didn't fight the tears this time. Slipping to his knees, he cried out, 'And I buried him. I buried him inside the Fold. I-'

'No, you didn't,' said Mrs Winter, 'he was inside their minds, inside their dreams when it happened. Fantus knew what he was doing.'

'How do you know that?'

'There's your proof.' She pointed at Garec.

'Me?' Garec looked around at the others. 'What did I do?'

'You didn't didn't die this morning. Why is that?' die this morning. Why is that?'

Garec rubbed stiffness from his arm. 'They were killing me. I figured it was over; I was heading for the Northern Forest, or whatever might pass for the Northern Forest around here, but I had to try and reach Milla. I don't know why they stopped; they just left me alone.' His face was a roadmap of cuts and bruises. He thought of Kellin, sailing somewhere along the Northern Archipelago, and wanted badly, right at that moment, to go home.

'The ash dream,' Steven whispered, pulling himself together. 'So he did get in.'

Mrs Winter nodded.

'And all this time, he doubted himself,' Mark said.

Steven took back Hannah's printout. 'So Alen Jasper, Kantu, was my great-great-grandfather?'

'He was.' Hannah crossed to hug him. 'And Pikan Tettarak, the woman he loved more than anyone else in these past five generations, was your great-great-grandmother.'

'Did Alen know?' Steven asked. It felt good to have Hannah against him, feeling the warmth of her, the shape of her, there, still alive, still with him.

'No,' Hannah whispered. 'I'm sorry. I just never thought that he would be gone and he was so preoccupied with caring for-'

'It's all right.' Steven hid his face in the crook of her neck. 'It's all right.' He flashed back to southern Falkan. We are the Larion Senators We are the Larion Senators.

'Mrs Winter?' Mark ladled out another scoop of peaches. 'When Steven and I fell across the Fold, the far portal was left open in our house, with your keystone there on the desk. I fell through on a Thursday night; Steven joined me on what would have been early Friday morning-'

'I didn't fall through until Friday evening,' Hannah added.

'So why did you just leave it there, opened like that? Why didn't you come up to the house and close the portal? Why didn't you take the keystone?' Mark stood. Steven looked up at him; Redrick Shen was noticeably taller than Mark had been.

'I was monitoring the portal,' she replied. 'I knew where the keystone was, but I didn't know if you had accidentally fallen into the portal, or if you had been invited into Eldarn by Fantus or Kantu, perhaps even by Nerak. I didn't close the portal, because if I had and you returned suddenly, you might have found yourself swimming home from the Aleutians.'

'Oh shit, that's right,' Steven said.

'And I didn't want to take the keystone, because if Fantus or Kantu had had brought you across the Fold, I wanted the key available to them.' brought you across the Fold, I wanted the key available to them.'

'And if Nerak happened to come through for it, unannounced?'

'I would have known,' she said, donning her glasses again, as if out of habit. 'I actually went to the bank that morning, ostensibly to cash a cheque. Myrna and Howard were working the window and neither of them seemed to know that you had taken anything from the safe. So I didn't imagine there was any cause for concern. I didn't expect anyone would be going into your house; everyone assumed you were climbing Decatur Peak together. Howard breaking in that afternoon came as a complete surprise to me. I rushed over when I saw the flames, but I wasn't permitted anywhere near the fire.'

'Hold on,' Mark interrupted, 'Howard 'Howard burned down our house?' burned down our house?'

'Didn't you know?'

'No,' Steven said, 'we had no idea. At first I thought it was Nerak, then I guessed maybe it was just a fluke, one of those things.'

'It was Howard Griffin,' she said. 'He apparently left the stove on in your kitchen.'

'I am going to beat the shit out of him,' Mark muttered.

'Friend of yours?' Garec elbowed him in the ribs.

'An abscess in my rectum,' Mark said. 'Howard is Steven's boss.'

'Disgusting, but I am proud to say that I know what all those words mean, in English. Fancy trick, this cross-Fold travel.'

'Mrs-' Steven started, then, 'Sorry, Lessek, why didn't you know if we had fallen through or if Gilmour had come over and invited us back?'

'The portal wasn't opened until late at night. I had been asleep, so I couldn't determine if anyone had come through before Mark disappeared, and you were hanging around so long afterward, I thought perhaps you and he had coordinated something with Fantus or Kantu on the other side.'

'I was a bit nervous before that first crossing,' Steven admitted, blushing at the memory.

'And when they came and hauled away the remains of your house, I tracked the portal and the key and I let them go.'

'To the dump?' Mark was incredulous. 'Why?'

'Why not? It was a damned-near perfect hiding spot: outside of town, buried in the mountains. Who would've thought to go looking for them up there?'

'But the portal was closed!' Steven shouted. 'I nearly drowned coming back, landing in the ocean off South Carolina, and then I had to race across the country with Nerak crawling up my backside the entire trip. I found the house razed to the ground, and then I had to dig around up there, through that mountain of ice and frozen diapers and rotting food and shit until I found the stone and the portal. Why?'

'I had to assume the worst,' Mrs Winter explained calmly. 'You hadn't returned, so protecting the key meant allowing the portal to close. I am afraid, boys, that the keystone and the Eldarni family lines are more important even than the two of you.'

'But aren't we we the Eldarni family lines?' Mark said. 'Isn't he the incarnation of the Larion Senate? Am I not some errant Ronan prince?' the Eldarni family lines?' Mark said. 'Isn't he the incarnation of the Larion Senate? Am I not some errant Ronan prince?'

'You are,' she said, 'but the line doesn't end with you two. You were, sadly, more expendable than my keystone.'

'Your sister.' Steven pointed at Mark.

'Your sister,' Mark said. sister,' Mark said.

'Like I said, you're catching on, boys. Losing you two was tragic; oh, I worried about you for weeks, but I couldn't leave the portal open for ever. When the trucks came and hauled the debris up the canyon, I was actually glad: it meant I didn't have to find another relatively permanent storage place for it. And knowing I couldn't get it back into the safe, I let it go up the mountain.'

'How did you get here?' Jennifer had been trying to stay abreast of the conversation. 'We didn't know until yesterday that we had to be here at the beach. How is it that you're here, all the way from Colorado, so quickly?'

'I was following you,' Mrs Winter replied. She considered another go at the peaches, then decided against it. 'When Nerak arrived and nearly destroyed Idaho Springs, I delayed him long enough for Steven to sneak away towards Denver. It wasn't much, a few fire trucks, a handful of police officers in the street, just enough to allow Steven to disappear.'

'Why didn't you kill him?' Hannah asked.

'I'm not strong enough for that, my dear,' Mrs Winter said, 'not here. It's been a long time. I have been able to develop an interesting perspective on Eldarn and the goings-on there, but that's taken me centuries to do. To kill Nerak, I would have had to open the Fold and I couldn't do that without the spell table. When Steven fled with the keystone, I was more nervous than I've been in hundreds of years. I had to assume that with Nerak pursuing him, Steven was working with Fantus and Kantu. However, I couldn't be absolutely certain, not until David Johnson died.'

'Who's David Johnson?' Garec asked of anyone who might know.

'A- Well, he would have been a friend of mine,' Jennifer said, 'from Silverthorn. Nerak killed him, and a woman who worked at his store, right in front of me. It was horrible, terrifying- but how did you know?'

'I read about it in the paper,' Mrs Winter said. 'I knew Nerak was there and I knew that you had the portal. Steven had given it to you, and when you didn't turn it over to Nerak, I knew you and Steven were working on the right side of the fence.' To Steven, she said, 'I'm sorry I didn't say anything to you that morning in Idaho Springs, but I couldn't. I didn't know what had happened since you had left. You could have been rushing home to retrieve the key for Nerak.'

'But you didn't try to stop me when I went to the landfill.' Steven was nonplussed.

'Of course not.' Mrs Winter sighed, a little frustrated at trying to explain herself. 'By that time, Nerak was in the bank killing people and leaving dead bodies all over town, the odious motherfucker.' She paused. 'Poor Myrna; she was just a kid. I couldn't get to the landfill before you, so I had to trust that you were working with Fantus or Kantu. That was one of the more nerve-wracking days of my long, long life.'

'And you couldn't save Myrna?' Mark asked sadly.

Mrs Winter shook her head. Nerak would have torn me to pieces. I'm surprised he didn't sense my presence in town when he arrived. He probably thought it was the keystone, or maybe the portal.'

'But you're Lessek,' Lessek,' Garec said. 'We were told stories about you from the time we were kids. It was the stuff of great legends. You were the Larion Senate founder, the most powerful sorcerer of all time. You didn't have enough strength to save those people?' Garec said. 'We were told stories about you from the time we were kids. It was the stuff of great legends. You were the Larion Senate founder, the most powerful sorcerer of all time. You didn't have enough strength to save those people?'

'I had the ash dream,' Mrs Winter said simply. 'It was the primary building block for most of the common-phrase spells I researched and wrote during my Twinmoons at Sandcliff. It was my strength as a researcher and a teacher, the means for me to send messages to Kantu or Fantus, to lead Regona Carvic away from Riverend Palace the night Nerak killed Danmark and Danae. She ended up in Vienna, if memory serves.'

Mark perked up. 'Vienna?'

'Yes. Why?'

'Sorry, go on.' He ran a hand through Milla's curls.

She did. 'The ash dream was the way I made suggestions to Mark about his family, how I charted the evolution of your partisan struggle in Eldarn, even the way I encouraged those fire-fighters to block the on ramp to I-70 when Nerak was chasing Steven towards Denver. But that's it. Oh, I can still dole out a significant blast; I was pleased with my efforts on the beach this morning, but my strength as a sorcerer, a magician capable of levelling a mountain, or whatever legends you might have heard about me in your youth, Garec, was founded on the spell table. I didn't have the spell table, hadn't seen it in nearly a hundred generations, so no, I didn't have the power to subdue Nerak.'

'So the ash dream, this key element in your abilities, is just the power of suggestion?' Garec craned his neck, looking for more tea, but found the pot empty.

'Oh no, the ash dream is the power of knowledge, the one common denominator in any spell. The more one can understand and manipulate perceptions around a body of knowledge, the more flexible and effective his or her spells can grow. If I could have brought one thing with me from Eldarn, well, all right, two, technically, I would have brought my keystone and that book.' Mrs Winter gestured towards the leatherbound tome, wrinkled from so many dunkings in the past three Twinmoons.

'And you followed me, followed the portal, instead of going back with the keystone,' Jennifer added. 'That's why you were already here this morning.'

'I did,' Mrs Winter shrugged. 'I followed you, because-'

'Because you can't go back,' Steven guessed, 'can you?'

'No, Steven, I can't. My ... my so-called friends friends and colleagues arranged that in the wake of my disappearance, sometime around the beginning of the second Age, almost five Eras ago.' She removed her glasses again and ran bony fingers over the lines etched in her face. and colleagues arranged that in the wake of my disappearance, sometime around the beginning of the second Age, almost five Eras ago.' She removed her glasses again and ran bony fingers over the lines etched in her face.

A heavy silence fell over the sunlit dining room. Two joggers, bundled up against the cold, passed by on the hard-packed sand near the waterline; neither noticed that the restaurant doors had been forced open. Beyond them, the North Atlantic, glittering gold in the sun, rolled with the tide, unconcerned that it had swallowed an army less than an hour earlier.

Garec, intrigued by the bright colours of the jackets and footwear, watched the joggers disappear into the distance. The world around him slowed, even time seemed to grow weary, trudging along to a soft dirge. They were done. They had won. He ought to feel better about it, but now all he wanted was to go home, to find Kellin and to sleep for a Twinmoon. He hadn't felt safe for much of his life, not until this moment. He honestly hadn't expected it, and now he was afraid even to consider what might lie ahead. How would he handle the realisation of everything he and his friends had ever worked to accomplish? The notion of success, hard-fought and harder-won, unnerved him. Garec decided he would go home and he would sleep. Then he would lock his bow and quivers away and ride for the Blackstones and Renna. The thought of his fiery little mare comforted him and he turned from the windows to ask, 'What do we do now?'

At first, no one answered. The challenges they had met stood taller than those that now lay before them. Saving Eldarn saving Earth had seemed so unlikely a battle to win: none of them had ever thought they would live this long. Now, faced with the task of rebuilding Eldarn, of starting over again a thousand Twinmoons later, the breadth of the work ahead was staggering.

Mark, the history teacher, started on their list. 'Education, public health, decent food supplies, shelter, clean water, working farms, shipping, roads, industry, a reliable judiciary, a set of reasonable laws formative, not summative, not now, no way and a representative government, right from the start. It might seem like it would be easier to start off with a monarchy and then switch over after a while, but that's not the way to rebuild. They have to own it; there have to be some common values, simple and I do mean dirt-simple things the people of Eldarn can agree upon; we're talking about a people with basic literacy, not the crew who spent the past fifty Twinmoons under Gilmour's tutelage, but the rest of the population. That's where you start a true grass-roots effort. Holy shit, it'll take lifetimes to get that place put back together. I don't... I can't even get it all straight in my head. It's too big a problem to even conceptualise without getting dizzy.'

'Was there any beer in that fridge?' Steven whispered to Hannah. 'He works better after a beer or two.'