More than two decades had passed since the cathedral bells rang for King Carlton's coronation. The realm had aged.
Drake, who had earned the Golden Acorn in the summer of 1999, was now the Master of the Acorn class — knighted, married to Deanna, living in a country house outside Tanglewood. His old home in town was rented to a young couple. He came into the office some mornings, taught some afternoons, and spent his evenings on his porch.
Cowbird had been gone five years. Some said he'd been developing his magic in lands nobody mapped. Some said he'd simply retired. Hawk had built a plantation in Southpoint and his oldest son ran it now. Iron Claw had moved to Storm Gate. Artimus had gone north to the Ice Land, where his red beard had grayed and his face had hardened from the cold.
Talon itself had become something else. Six offices now — Tanglewood, Knighton, Southpoint, Storm Gate, Northshire, and Diamond Sky. Over five hundred members. Twenty teleport portals in the basement. Sixteen tunnels beneath the operation. A full staff of clerics. A full-time cook. Rooter ran Tanglewood. A man named Joshua — known across the realm as the Drummer of Fire — ran Diamond Sky. Gordon, long retired as the Royal Smith, worked Knighton.
King Carlton had passed. Kayleel sat the throne now, with Sir Freddrick still captaining the Royal Guard.
It was a different realm than the one that had begun the chronicles — older, settled, almost peaceful. The kind of realm that had run out of stories and started keeping them in the heads of old men.
Until Hawk pulled the old crew together.
There was an island far from any charted shore. Never inhabited. Barely explored. Nature had run wild on it hundreds of thousands of years ago, when reckless magic from older lands had broken something in the air. Whole zones of the island were anti-magic. Other zones were aligned to good or evil. A device had been planted somewhere in its mountain — half good, half evil, designed so it could not be tampered with by anyone of single alignment.
The device had been planted by a man named Stryker. The technology was from an old land that almost nobody in BlewYonder remembered. Cowbird had once lived there.
Cowbird was the only one who could defuse it.
Jinx came first. Older now, dressed in black, still impossibly beautiful, still impossible to predict. She knew where Cowbird was. She wanted a piece of the action. A deal was made.
Three days later Cowbird walked into the Talon basement, gray-bearded and simple-cloaked. The young members fell silent. Most of them had only heard the legends.
A fighter named Grant — one of the Acorn class's best — challenged him to spar. Grant swung a long sword overhead. Cowbird swung past the blade and dropped him with an elbow to the nose. I never lost it, he said. Just haven't had to use it in a while.
The room went silent. It's good to see some of the old founders return, Grant said.
That night Hawk and Artimus and Iron Claw ate at the Talon table with Cowbird and Drake. The next morning they took ship from a seedy harbor town. With them were Sir Freddrick of the Royal Guard, and two old men in dark robes — guides, Sir Freddrick called them, men who had once worked the island with Stryker. Their faces stayed half-hidden under their hoods. Sir Freddrick said the deal had been their anonymity. Nobody pressed him.
The crossing took three days.
The island rose from the water steaming. Black volcanic rock under their boots. Plants and insects three times the normal size. Air that magic could not enter. They moved inland in a single line — Sir Freddrick at the front with the guides, Iron Claw and Artimus close behind, Hawk in the middle, Cowbird at his own pace, Drake at the rear.
That first night, Drake left camp under cover of dark and scouted Sir Freddrick's second campfire down the beach. He heard one sentence clearly: Make sure that no one knows that Cambion is here.
The next morning he told Cowbird, who said, Hidden agenda. Wait until the timing is right.
The first chambers in the mountain were filled with shallow pools that turned green when good touched them. The good aligned crossed for the others. The evil-aligned guides cleared the dark pools. They went deeper.
Then they reached the grid.
The squares changed every two seconds. A wrong step meant a fall into something nobody who'd seen it had survived. One of the guides stepped wrong and was gone. Cowbird crossed without breaking stride. Drake crossed using every skill he had ever learned. Sir Freddrick stepped onto the grid in a rage, and made it halfway before he lost his timing. He did not come back up.
That was when Cowbird turned and said, I know who he is. Drake, that is Cambion from a long time ago. Kayleel gave him that scar.
The remaining guide pulled back his hood.
Cambion. Older than memory. The mark on his left arm where Sir Kayleel's blade had cut him in some forgotten year. The man Talon had hunted across two continents in 1999. The wizard who had vanished through a teleport at Bronson Lake.
He looked at Drake and said his days of trouble had ended with the war.
Then he and Cowbird went to work on Stryker's device.
The device was in a chamber where the ceiling descended slowly toward the floor. Cowbird and Cambion working from one side, the charts open between them. A switch on the far wall had to be thrown from the top of a thin ash heap whose footing would not hold a man's weight.
Drake climbed. He fell twice. He took off his shirt and laid it on the ash. He lunged forward. The ceiling came down. The ash gave way under his feet and his shirt sank into it. He saw the rock dropping toward his head.
Drake, grab my hand.
Cambion at the top, hand outstretched. Pulled him to safety. The ceiling fell to the floor where Drake had been a moment before.
Cowbird worked the last sequence. The two men who had spent twenty years hunting each other now worked side by side. When the final shutdown engaged, Cambion cast a teleport spell and brought Hawk, Iron Claw, Artimus, and Jinx into the safe corridor. They ran.
The mountain caved in behind them. The volcano erupted at sunset. They reached the harbor before dawn, found the ship waiting, sailed for Pirates Cove, and teleported home.
King Kayleel met them in the castle's board room in Knighton. He had nearly been declared missing — a last-ditch attempt on his life had been put down. Two of Sir Freddrick's High Guards had been part of the plot. Cowbird had killed them both.
Cambion sat in an anti-magic cell at the bottom of the castle, awaiting trial.
Lord Bronston was killed by his acts, the king said, and that cannot be taken lightly even if it was twenty-three years ago. But he understands his past. That alone is telling me he is changing.
Drake visited the cell on his second day in the castle. Cambion stood as he entered, set down his book. They spoke a while. Then Drake left, the door closed behind him, and the bluish haze of the cell settled back into stillness.
Two days later, the old crew gathered at the old tavern in Tanglewood — Cowbird, Hawk, Artimus, Iron Claw, Drake, and Rooter at the head of the table. They reflected on the years. They missed the road. Hawk said he wanted to move back to Tanglewood and asked Cowbird about his status.
Cowbird was about to speak when an attractive woman in her mid-thirties walked into the tavern, sat at the bar, and gave him a smile.
He stood. He wished each of them a good evening.
I guess I'm back, he said.
He left with her.
The crew finished their drinks and walked into the night.
Cambion remained in his anti-magic cell at the bottom of Knighton's castle, awaiting trial. Drake returned to teaching at Tanglewood. The bells of Knighton's cathedral did not ring that season. There was no need.
The realm was, for once, at rest. But there were still names that had not been spoken aloud. An Old Man on a road. A young hobbit at his side. The Sun Ring.
The chronicle would resume the following year.