From the Journal of Raleris the Lorekeeper

The ground, in this day and age, and in most ages of the past, generally stays where it is put. While there may be landslides or seas rising and falling, glaciers creeping across high mountains and jungles spreading or retreating, the land does not leap from its place and land on far distant fields, and it certainly does not jump from world to world as though inspired by the tourists that traverse it to see the sights of Dominia!

It is amazing how this maxim, so indisputable on so many worlds, can be dramatically overturned by the peculiarities of one obstinate plane. The ability of the Multiverse in its infinite variety to overturn such laws with a single haphazardly structured plane results in a very untidy and inconvenient Multiverse, and I have known more than a handful of Planeswalkers who react to that untidyness with remarkable irritation.

A normal mortal, human or homarid, centaur or cephalid, will gripe and groan about the things in his world that do not fit. A dwarf will hammer it until it works, or until it shatters beneath the strain. A goblin might blow the object of his ire to the Abyss, taking himself with it. But a Planeswalker, particularly a Planeswalker that has once tasted the potent magic of centuries gone, will look at a Multiverse that has the nerve, the sheer gall, to jumble about the Blind Eternities like a heap of jeweled ore and dirty gangue intermingled, and decide that the ore must be properly dressed and separated and purified of these impudent flaws.

Planeswalkers, like Gods, Elder Dragons, and madmen, stand before the vastness of everything, and bellow, "You shall blink first!"

The notes of Commodore Guff, my predecessor in watching over the Infinite Library I call home, would not suggest a particularly well ordered mind. They are disjointed and scattered about, as are his instructions for navigating the Library, which I think he wandered mostly by memory alone. The only thing I can find written on the plane of Valjan is this fragment, stained with wine and age:

"VALJAN--Semi-constructed plane, very strange and chaotic place. Excessively meddled with; everything now jumbles about disagreeably. Mana bonds are slippery and potent, and calling upon the land has frustrating results. Perfect example of the damnable stupidity of our predecessors. Don't plan on going back, and don't recommend that anyone else visit it."

I unfortunately have no other existing sources for Valjan at the moment, although I hope to acquire more soon. Once, many years ago, I stumbled upon a copy in the library of a whole history of the early meddling that Guff alludes to, but I set it down in a moment of distraction and cannot recall how I found it in the first place. This is but one of the many frustrations of living in an apparently infinite library.

With other things constantly distracting me, I never found my way to the plane to discover, for myself, what Guff found so objectionable, until a recent string of events forced me to see it with my own eyes.

What a plane it is.

It is not just the sight of vast mesas stretching upward like a landscape flipped on its side, or the sight of dead and fossilized trees marching across barren fens like tombstones, or the raging storms charged with such power and ferocity that they can spark life from the very rock. No, while Valjan boasts all of these things, the true wonder of the plane lies in the very malleability of these landscapes at the hands of a skilled Planeswalker. The ground of Valjan comes to heel when called, no matter where in the Multiverse you are, bringing all its strange weather and strange magic with it. And--as I nearly discovered at great cost!--all other lands are drawn to it as well.

The Commodore, whatever the states of his notes might suggest, was not at home to disorder, and a plane where the ground refuses to stay planted where it has been set was not to his liking. But the Commodore, was more Man than Planeswalker, at least until his one great folly cost him his life, and while he grumbled and groused about the plane that behaved less like a dependable hound and more like a bounding pup, he did not demand that all the Multiverse conform to his vision.

Others are not so patient, and when they call a pet to heel--whether plane or person--they fully expect to be obeyed.

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My first trip to Valjan was not unaccompanied, in contrast to must such ventures taken by our kind. I happened to be playing host to a guest on the day the whole adventure started: an Aven, a bird-man, known on his ancient home of Dominaria as Kirsh of the Flats. Kirsh is a healer by profession, and had, on that day, come to my Library in order to check the progress of an old infection I had acquired many years before and which plagued me continuously. Do not think that I failed to heal due to Kirsh's negligence, however. The disease is an ancient one that baffled even the ancient healers of the Thran (or so the stories go) due to its remarkable affinity for magic of any sort, including, unfortunately and ironically, healing magic. The touch of mana simply encouraged its spread, and only through the careful injection of magic into the surrounding tissue and artificial supports for the parts of my body that had wasted most considerably from the disease, was I able to remain as spry and spritely as I am in my old age.

Yet, Kirsh had given me the cleanest bill of health I could expect under the circumstances, and we were now chatting not about my perennial problems but about Kirsh's. It seemed that a recent run-in with another Planeswalker had sent him into a flurry of activity, wandering from plane to plane in search of information on madness and its treatment.

"The problem as I see it," I was saying to him, "is figuring out just what you mean first by madness. Delusions? Melancholy? Overwhelming terror? Disrespect towards books? Once we sort that out we can narrow our search, figure out where best to start wandering through" (I gestured to the shadowy corridors that surrounded us) "all of this."

Kirsh made a warbling, groaning cry and hopped lightly from the chair back on which he customarily perched during his visits, pacing the floor restlessly. "'Ris, that's the problem in a clamshell. I'm lost! What counts as "madness" on one plane is divine genius on another, and on another it might simply be shiftlessness, or possession, or--and this is the worst of all!--it might be an actual curse or enchantment of some sort! There are as many magical maladies of the mind as there are of the body, as, I mean, as you obviously know."

"How long have you been searching?"

He clicked his beak and paused for a moment. "...Two months? Maybe more?"

"You're not usually this impatient, Kirsh," I observed mildly. "You must have 'Walked as much in the last two months as you did in the last two decades prior."

At this point I had to move the small table bearing the meal we had been enjoying because Kirsh's wings had started involuntarily spreading in his agitation. So caught up was he in the harm done to mortal minds that he was blissfully unaware of the harm nearly done to our drinks.

"I've been living for... for centuries in a sun-dazzled haze, 'Ris! Before the False God rose, I spent years in isolation! I don't even know how many."

"We could no doubt calculate the exact number, work out a timeline of some sort--"

"Isn't it so typical that I've always settled in places with mild seasons, where days and years blended together? It's so... so typical of me!"

"I suppose if you do it for several centuries straight it may be termed 'typical,' yes."

"I just feel like I've wasted so much time. I could have been prepared for everything that happened on Ameran if I had spent those years learning all I could rather than... than..."

"Practicing your arts as one of the finest healers across the Multiverse?" I said sharply.

This finally halted his frantic pacing. Awkwardly he refolded his wings along his back and took a breath. "Well. I'm a passable healer but..."

I rolled my eyes. "Dear Kirsh, I would trust my aging bones to no one else, please remember that." I stood and walked over to my friend. "You have set for yourself a grand task, and my library is open to you. I would wager you have already learned much, and with the resources of an infinite library you're sure to find the answer you seek." Kirsh did not smile (beaks, you will recall, are not suited to such expressions) but he looked grateful in an avian sort of way. "Now, as to this subdivision of materials," I began--

--when I was rudely interrupted by a question I had not heard in quite some time.

"May I borrow a book?"

Kirsh and I both started at the youthful voice that had asked the question and, turning toward the source of the sound, we saw a tall youth in curious clothes and a large jacket. Strangely, the room was faintly visible through the youth's body, as though he wavered somewhat out of reality.

"Beg pardon?" I stammered, flustered by the sudden intrusion.

"My name is Renn Winmoore. I am a Planeswalker like yourself, and I have come to your library to borrow a book from the famous Infinite Library of Guff the Commodore.

"I-I'm sorry," Kirsh said, "Are you... a ghost? A ghost planeswalker?"

Winmoore turned to him and nodded in assent. Kirsh marvelled for a few moments, and I did my best to feign similar marvel, but in truth my mind was filled with misgivings. Renn's name was not unfamiliar to me, and for a time I had considered him as a possible candidate for apprenticeship, though the wildness of his nature held me back. But recently I had heard reports of strange appearances of the youth in odd locales, running errands of curious sorts, though to what purpose none knew. A change had come over the boy in recent times, a change much for the worse, and now he had appeared in my hidden library, requesting books. No, better say demanding, for though his tone was polite, there was a sense of perilous command lurking beneath the surface.

Having concluded our marvels (which, though Kirsh seemed not to notice, I could tell Winmoore bore with barely contained impatience) I offered my services in finding any book he wished to see.

"You are the librarian?" he asked.

"Raleris, the Lorekeeper, yes. And this is Kirsh of the Flats."

"Very, ah, pleased!" Kirsh bobbed his head.

"I apologise for not introducing us to you sooner," I continued, "but I was so struck by your appearance here that I quite forgot my manners. Now, what might I do for you, boy?"

A flicker of some emotion flashed across Winmoore's face at the final word, and my confusion and misgivings deepened. If I could, I thought, simply delay the boy, perhaps I could pry from him a purpose or some clue as to what I might expect, should our meeting go sour.

"Do you have a copy of Guff's 'Decline and Fall of the Thran Empire?'" Renn asked immediately.

I hemmed and hawwed for a few moments then told him that while I was certain a copy of the book existed in the library, I was not sure just where it was at the moment, as the Commodore had left the collection in some disorder and such an aged volume would, no doubt, be further in the stacks, where I seldom went and where the books were often scattered about in a highly eccentric way befitting the eccentric intellect of the master. Winmoore stood perfectly still through the whole speech but somehow, despite the stillness of form and features, he radiated displeasure.

"One of his histories of Teresiare, then. Any tome will do."

"Ah, our histories of Teresiare are, at this moment, all on loan in New Benalia. Perhaps there might be a volume or two that I missed, though, if you could be more specific as to the type of information you want."

Renn, frowning, opened his mouth to speak, when suddenly he recoiled as though struck. Kirsh let out a shrill cry of surprise and recoiled as well from Renn, his eyes open wide in shock. Renn's translucent form momentarily rippled and another form seemed superimposed upon it. And then, there was a terrible voice that seemed to issue from the very stones.

"Do not pry into thoughts that are not your own. Boy."

Winmoore--or the thing that wore Winmoore's shape--raised its hand and Kirsh was thrown upwards and away, and only his wings saved him from great injury. (To my understandably great distress, the table containing our food, which I had struggled so valiantly to maintain, was knocked every which way by his flight.) The Renn thing turned and ran into the stacks and for a moment I hesitated, torn between my friend and my library. "Come!" Kirsh cried, however, righting himself in the air. "We must not let him take the books!" With that, I ran, or should I say limped as well as I could on aged legs, after the ghost boy.

Kirsh, faster and less afflicted by the frustrations of gravity, flapped above the stacks ahead of me and then dived, as a gull might, after his quarry. There was a burst of magic off in the distance and I hurried to come to my friend's aid.

Rounding a high shelf of scrolls, I saw Kirsh crouched behind a prismatic shield while the entity calling itself Renn Winmoore hurled bolts of energy at him. I was prepared to join the battle when there was a strange disturbance. It felt as though the room had been subject to a great upwelling of mana, and as Kirsh and I watched, surprised, we saw our patch of the library strangely transformed. Holes opened in patches of the floor upon what seemed to be a stormy sea, and the columns surrounding the shelves transformed into obsidian spires that reached upward into the darkness of the library's ceiling. Most alarmingly, a storm seemed to boil in the upper reaches of the stacks and lightning crackled across the obsidian spires.

With a wave, Kirsh attempted to dispel what seemed an enchantment, but to his surprise the spell had no effect. Whatever we were witnessing was, in fact, real.

We had no time to marvel at this however, as there was a great flash of lightning overhead and a chunk of obsidian crashed to the floor, shattering the tiles. Fearing that Renn would Planeswalk in the confusion, I quickly spoke a word of command and the ghost boy--who seemed, in fact, ready to step into the Eternities--swooned in a momentary confusion. I smiled slightly as he involuntarily clucked like a chicken several times. (Too many mages approach magic with a stonyfaced sincerity, in my opinion.)

I cast the spell not a moment too soon, for the splintered obsidian began assembling itself, with periodic bursts of lightning, into a fair facsimile of Kirsh. The obsidian creature leapt at my friend, its beak open in a silent cry. Kirsh grappled with the thing, and I rushed to his aid, hitting it with the first thing that came to hand. Unfortunately, it was a rare first edition of Memoires of a Cabal Gigolo. Its metal casing (locked tight and enchanted to prevent the more, shall we say, vivid fantasies from escaping) dented visibly at the blow and I hesitated for a moment. "'Ris!" Kirsh called urgently and, groaning, I brought the book down on the construct's head several more times until, finally, the energy dissipated and the obsidian blocks fell to the ground.

We both sighed with relief to have bested the foe, but I had no time to mourn the denting of my book. Kirsh's eyes widened and, before I had a chance to turn 'round to face whatever new danger assailed us, he pushed me aside and raised his arms. I landed heavily on the ground and saw a great gout of flame barrel towards us, but a great wind sprung up from between Kirsh's raised arms and the flames were turned aside. The wind knocked Winmoore into a bookcase and he found himself buried in a flurry of pages.

"The books!" I cried in horror. Flame was everywhere, and my Library was in peril of burning to the ground. Kirsh raised his talons once more and the blue glow foretold disaster of a different sort.

"Not water!" I shouted in a great panic. "Not on the books!"

Kirsh dithered for a moment, fingering the cameos that hung from his belt in consternation, but then seemed to hit upon an idea. He gestured in the air with a claw and there was a brilliant flash. When my vision returned, I saw that the books and shelves that had caught fire had been turned, marvellously, to gold. With nothing to burn, the fire was quenched.

"I'll turn them back later," Kirsh intoned breathlessly. "Adaptation of a spell I use to stabilize injured patients long enough to bring them to a place where they can receive better medical attention."

Climbing creakily from my place on the floor, I laughed at this clever marvel, but was interrupted by the sound of settling books. The pile into which Renn had been thrown collapsed inward and the ghost boy emerged from it--through it!--unscathed, though I noticed that he had left his apparently corporeal coat behind.

He had one book in his hand, and in our moment of distraction he had apparently gathered enough mana to facilitate an escape. Before our eyes, he vanished into the Blind Eternities.

Without hesitation, we followed.

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The chase was neither short nor easy, but I kept pace with the Renn thing, Kirsh right behind me, and before very long we found ourselves nearing, in the roil of nothingness, a particular somethingness, one which seemed quite familiar.

The place we had landed was a sea, dotted with occasional black shores, of obsidian monoliths, above which a great storm roiled--the same storm that boiled in the upper atmosphere of my library. I felt out for the mana of the place and found it strangely active and tumultuous. It seemed almost eager to meet me and rose at my touch. To my surprise, there was a corresponding flicker in the landscape, and I realized how Renn had called the strange landscape into my library:

The land itself had come there at his call. In calling upon the mana bond, some of the physical land had responded! I had never seen anything quite like it, and I marvelled at the strange qualities of the plane.

I marvelled only briefly, however, for Kirsh pointed across the landscape with a cry. We perceived from the obsidian boulder on which we perched a figure running across the water in the distance, his feet not disturbing the roiling waves that he ran over. A book was clutched in his hand.

I was all for setting after the boy, but Kirsh put his talon on my shoulder and, breathing heavily, shook his head. I realized in that moment that my own breathing had grown laboured, and I was, in fact, quite exhausted from the battle in the library. I sank to the ground and Kirsh sank with me. "What should we do?" he queried.

I thought for a moment, then snapped my finger as an idea struck me. I gathered my mana to me (nearly the last mana I had!) as around me the land flickered once more with what seemed to be ghost impressions of distant shores that I had once known. Ignoring, for the moment, these strange effects, I cast a simple spell I had learned long ago as a boy.

From the surf bubbled up numerous pink balls. They sprouted spindly little arms and legs, fat ears, and idiotic grins.

Kirsh gave me a long look. "For some reason, when you snapped your fingers like that I thought you had hit on some brilliant plan."

I laughed. "I have, my friend! These creatures will be our scouts and follow after our quarry. There are far too many to kill or dispel, and there are enough that even if the ghost boy runs tirelessly for hours, they can still guide us like breadcrumbs in the old Icatian story of Bjorn and Becca! I'm sure that was in the history of folktales I loaned you."

Kirsh nodded slowly. "It was memorable. The story ends with the children devoured by a Llurgoyf for not saying their prayers."

I cleared my throat. "You do have a striking memory, Kirsh. But remember, we don't know if there are any Llurgoyfs on this plane."

Kirsh sighed. "Perhaps not literally... but..." He hesitated for a moment and then turned his head to look me directly in the eye. "When Renn recoiled from us, it was because I touched his mind. You seemed uneasy, and I thought... well, I thought that I could read his intentions."

"What did you see?"

Kirsh's eyes went distant with the memory. "There is... something else in Renn Winmoore's mind. Something ancient and dreadful and cold. I saw a king--no, an emperor--dark and gold on a dark throne, and his flesh, as I watched, grew taught and dry and mummified. But he was more than that... corpse on the dark throne... He was..." Kirsh shook his head. "I can't describe it. It was like..."

"As though you had touched the mind of a whole land, a whole city?" I murmured.

Kirsh nodded in surprise.

Slowly, I spoke. "There was once a Planeswalker who ruled over countless planes as a god king of order. But the Mending stripped him of the greater part of his power, and eventually he was forced to preserve his life by turning his last bastion, a city known as Ariva, into a phylactery. He transformed himself into a lich and Ariva became the vessel for his soul and his spark."

"And you think I touched his mind? But... why send a boy after us?"

I stood gingerly. "The Planeswalker, Vasilias, in a moment of terror, once attempted to Planeswalk. When he did, the entire city of Ariva was ripped from its world into the Blind Eternities. He, and Ariva with him, was trapped in the void between worlds."

"Then..." Kirsh said slowly, eyes widening in dismay, "He's found a way to Planeswalk again, using another Planeswalker."

Nodding slowly, I thought again to the strange flickering in the land and looked grimly after the retreating form of a ghost boy whose body was the vessel of an ancient and ruthless king.

"Come, my friend," I said, "we have much to do."

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For most summoned creatures, my absence from their vicinity would pose a problem, but Beebles are composed of what we might very loosely describe as Sterner Stuff than most summoned entities. They are, in fact, exceedingly difficult to get rid of. This afforded us one small advantage: Kirsh and I were able to retreat to the Library once more, secure in the knowledge that the Beebles would still be there to guide our way.

We gathered what portions of our meal had escaped being trodden upon, wrapped them, and placed them within one pocket of my robes. We gathered, too, a flying carpet to transport me as I, unlike Kirsh, was not born with a pair of useful wings. I say that we did these things but in truth Kirsh did most of the work, after fretting over me for a bit. I was tired, and I found myself sagged in my chair looking, no doubt, rather like a lump of dirty robes ready for washing while Kirsh bustled about the place.

I closed my eyes--only blinked, really--and suddenly Kirsh was before me, telling me that the strange distortion in the library had dissipated, that everything was packed, and that he was ready to set out to retrieve my book. Noticing the particular choice of phrase, I told him in no uncertain terms that I would not be left behind and after a small argument we found ourselves drifting through the air of the strange plane where our book thief had evaded us.

Beebles, being a staggering nuisance, are easy to spot in the wild, and, once we were aloft, we quickly found the trail of them bobbing in the stormy waters like fat pink jellyfish. For several hours we flew low so as to avoid the lightning that crackled overhead, but soon we reached calmer skies. Gradually the spires fell away and the sea was covered in a dotting of small islands, strung across with dense and roiling plant life. The waters, now becalmed, filled with algae and we saw strange chimeric animals moving to and fro from sea to shore. It was a lush region and periodic breaks in the clouds bathed it in dazzling light. Through this remarkable vista we saw the spots of pink trailing off in a rough line, bubbling after our quarry.

It was another hour, perhaps, before we came to a small outpost, large enough for a small group of people, fitted with a small dock and a lighthouse that overlooked a narrow bay. There was no sight of Renn Winmoore, but the Beebles stopped here at the shore, suddenly. Kirsh signalled that we should land in a small copse of trees by the shore and, assenting, I brought the carpet down. We found that the copse was not of any sort of tree either of us knew, but was instead seemingly some sort of hardened algae that had climbed out of the sea, or been left there by the tides and now waved in the air, towards its top, much as it would once have waved in the sea.

Kirsh drew a deep breath and sighed. I chuckled. "Tired from the flight? Perhaps you should have stayed at home and rested, Kirsh, and left the adventuring to me!"

He rustled his feathers irritably. "Yes, Raleris, you're very funny, but what are we to do now? The trail ends here."

At that I sobered somewhat and sat for a few moments working my fingers through some of the knots that travelling by magic carpet invariably spun in my beard. "Well..." I said hesitantly "It's possible that he 'walked again..."

Kirsh nodded and sighed again. "I guess it might be possible to track him through the Eternities but I wouldn't know..." he trailed off and slowly rose from his seated position, looking off at the shore.

I rose as well and followed his gaze. There was a rather large lump of something on the beach, in the intertidal zone, surrounded by other detritus. I squinted a bit and shaded my eyes from the glaring sun, but to no effect. "Kirsh, my eyes have never been of avian keenness, and sitting in a dim library reading books has done nothing for them. You're going to have to explain what you are seeing."

"What happens when Beebles are killed?" Kirsh asked, still peering into the distance.

I shrugged. "They dissolve into a mass of bubbles, usually. I think they may be distantly related to the Jakkardian Squonk, actually, in their use of dissolution to protect themselves. If there are enough bubbles new Beebles may form. That's why any attempts to cook them must involve sauteing them live, so as to--" but Kirsh midway through my lecture on the finer points of Beeble-based cuisine, had spread his wings and rudely fluttered off down the beach.

I bent gingerly and rolled up the carpet, hefting it under my arm, and hobbled down the beach after him, gingerly avoiding the odd crab lizard things that were scuttling about to and fro collecting smaller creatures from the beached algae. After a short jaunt I reached Kirsh, who was kneeling pensively over what appeared to be some sort of mammal with an odd snout filled with objects more like serrated beaks than teeth. It was lying on its side, bubbles oozing from its mouth, staring wildly up at us, its breathing laboured.

"Beeble bubbles are not edible, are they?" Kirsh murmured.

"Ah, no. Hence the live sautéing."

Kirsh stalked around the creature a bit more making soft clucking sounds. He carefully placed his hands on the beast's side and for a moment it struggled to its feet but the aven stroked its ugly head and it settled down.

I huffed. "Well, this certainly is a bedevilment. I never expected our trail to be devoured by a gluttonous beast."

"Nooo..." Kirsh said slowly, "a beast would not keep eating what tasted foul."

I shrugged, "If you say so. I don't pretend to know the minds of beasts."

Kirsh cocked his head at me reproachfully. "You need to leave your library more, 'Ris. If you spent more time in the wild you'd know that something--Ah!" His claw, which had been petting the beast's head consolingly, froze and a faint light burst forth. The healer's deft fingers had found what I could not perceive: a glowing mark inscribed on the beast's brow.

"Bewitched and beguiled!" I blustered. "That is a mark of mind control!"

Kirsh preened smugly. "Someone wished to disrupt your trail, 'Ris. But the beast became too sick before she could travel further up the beach and consume the rest of the Beebles. And since there are no Beebles further along the trail..."

"He's likely to still be on this very island!" I chortled, slapping my compatriot on the shoulder. "Good work Kirsh! Listen, let's inquire after our ghostly quarry in yonder lighthouse. But be cautious: in the old histories of Vasilias and his empire, all accounts spoke of him using magic only of the brightest light and the dimmest shadow. This watery magic he seems to be using... it's simply not his established style. He must gain access to the mana reservoirs of whosoever he possesses. We can't know what to expect now."

Kirsh, kindly soul, took a few moments to ease the indigestion of the beast and break the geas that lay upon it (which allowed me to observe, once more, the strange flickering in the landscape that accompanied mana use on the plane). We left the beast to lope on its odd elephantine legs back into the brush, then the two of us trudged up the beach to the weathered lighthouse.

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An hour later, we were trapped in what can only be described as one of the more hideous ordeals that Dominia has to offer. Kirsh and I sat at one end of a long table, hemmed in on all sides by tall cloaked and hooded figures, listening to a seemingly interminable droning recitation.

We had made the novice's terrible mistake of taking supper with a clan of elves.

And elves they were, though they were a strange sight to see, antlered and hooved much like the elves of Former Lorwyn, elves that had something of the strange chimerical nature of the algae-choked sea. The outpost housed a full band of eight acolytes and their leader, who were delegates from a great library many miles distant. They dwelled in a kind of academic monasticism here on the island and had recently come to inspect the holdings of what was apparently a local repository for books and to update the island's catalogue in accordance with recent changes at the prime branch. All of this was laudable enough, of course, and describing ourselves as wandering scholars we gained easy admittance to the monastery through warm acknowledgement of a shared vocation.

Their leader was a silver haired old master by the name of Cyrohim of the Elhelwen family (apparently a quite significant old clan on Valjan) and surrounded by five of the eight acolytes he bade us, in his understated Elven way, to enjoy the hospitality of his temporary home. We eventually realized, however, that he was curious about our own mission, and after the fourth time that he made some remark to the effect of "Seldom see we travellers in this far distant isle, and their business often presses far afield, as we but shine the way to distant shores," that Kirsh responded to his fishing in the manner politeness apparently dictated.

"Ah, our business may, ah, take us in any number of directions, like your other guests" Kirsh stammered awkwardly while I nodded seriously beside him.

"O!" the master closed his ancient golden eyes and nodded solemnly. "The poets tell that Eirbol, belov'd of stars in ages hence did find herself once swept by senseless tides and dashed on stranger shores... but with a word fine aide did come to set her course aright." His eyes opened once more and he stood gazing at us expectantly.

After a moment spent sorting through this litany, Kirsh again spoke up, straining his voice to match the musicality of the elves. "Perhaps like... eye... er ball... we might with fair... fairest words find what we seek: a bo--"

"--Filling meal to stiffen our resolve for further journeys!" I cut in, smiling a bit manically. Kirsh turned to me questioningly but then followed my eyes as I glanced around the assembly. He stiffened and I knew he perceived what I had: there were now but four acolytes with us. One had crept away into the dim passage beside the entranceway. We both felt an apprehension of lurking danger and silently as one resolved not to speak further of our true purpose.

Unfortunately, I had spoken too quickly, without fully considering the offer and its result. And thus we found ourselves at the communal table with platters in front of us and the sound of Elvish recitation in our ears. I, as a historian, am, of course, no stranger to discussion of lineages and bloodlines, but never have I heard so much time devoted to listing all the antecedents of one inconsequential elf who, as far as I could make out, was not even present at the monastery at all! And occasionally, almost ritualistically, one of the acolytes would interject into Cyrohim's litany a lengthy exploration of the linguistic roots of a particular name and expound upon the wandering of a phoneme or two down through the ages, across mossy islands and algae-choked seas, each syllable the hero of its own journey.

Their speech was, of course, beautiful. But even the lilting timbre of elvish tongues wears thin after more than an hour of begats have been got.

I made a brief attempt to distract myself from the endless march of elven names with the food, but elven food--not all elven food, mind, but a particular kind of high elven food that is treated on many planes as closest to a sort of transcendent purity--is like subsisting on moonbeams. It may fill you with light, but I would challenge anyone to satiate their pallet with a moon's rays! So pure is high elven cuisine that it has been stripped of all such earthly concerns as flavor, texture, weight, crunch, or anything else one would normally hope to find. And the water is similarly so pure that one might dump it on oneself without any fear of getting wet, so insubstantial is it. I resolved, at that table, to always keep a small pouch of various spices and jellies with me from thenceforth, in case I ever was lost in the wilderness and was forced to survive upon Elven waybread and Elven water alone.

Kirsh's eyes had long since glossed over but he remained aware enough to periodically sink his talons into my leg when I threatened to succumb to sleep. Even that, however, becomes monotonous after a time, particularly when you are accustomed to pains in your leg, so it took quite a strong pinch to rouse me late in the day's festivities to a rather intriguing sight. Cyrohim was expounding upon his own vast family, but it was not this that drew our attention. Rather it was the face of one of the acolytes, a thin and severe looking man with sizeable horns, that drew our attention. It was subtly twisted into a derisive scowl and his eyes flashed with anger at each new name. After a short time he stood quietly and exited. Kirsh and I glanced at one another. Could this be our absent acolyte?

Then, to our surprise, a second elf stood quietly, a grim look of determination upon her face! Kirsh and I glanced at each other again and used our eyes to follow, as well as we could without arousing suspicion, her exit from the dining hall. After a moment, and a lull in Cyrohim's lengthy recitation, I stood creakily and, making excuses that I was weary (true) and ill (also true) and that my healer must attend to me before we slept (frankly not a bad idea) Kirsh and I made our own exit.

I pulled from my pocket a candle and a tinderbox then, having lit the candle, I pulled out a hunk of cheese saved from our meal earlier and, as Kirsh barely suppressed a croaking call of indignation, wolfed it down as I had longed to do all through the interminable meal. He did not, however, complain when I handed him a hunk of bread.

We crept down the darkened passageway, passing a number of cells where the acolytes of the great library slept (and where we were ostensibly going to sleep) till we reached a set of stairs. One stairwell led downward to the small dock. The other spiralled upward to the lighthouse. For a moment Kirsh and I stood uncertain, and were were on the verge of splitting up when suddenly a breath blew out our candle! We felt ourselves dragged unexpectedly by unseen hands down the steps to the dock, but we did not cry out for we heard a lilting voice whisper: "Speak no word, nor cry a cry! Lasale descends the stair, his steps by strange and ghostly feet o'ershadowed!"

And sure enough, a moment later we heard soft speech, though we heard no footsteps, for elves are light of tread and it had been many years since Renn Winmoore had a body with true form and substance.

"...this ravenous trembling!" the male elf was saying, "hour by hour I agonize over our plans."

"Do you doubt your King?" Renn's voice came. "Mine is the word, and the word of the King is the whole of the law, on this and all worlds."

"Doubting? Say rather I'm restless to sate my long hampered desires." (There was a soft growl from the figure that held us, though whether directed at the statement itself or the manner in which it was spoken, I could not tell.)

"Place your mark upon each head and you shall have all you desire. Leave the enchantment to me."

The faint glow of Renn Winmoore's ghostly body appeared in the hallway and Kirsh and I were pressed back against the wall of the other stair. The severe elf from supper walked a pace behind the ghost boy who strode with a strange, imperial gait not suited to such a youthful frame. "And what of the elderly man and the marvellous bird?" the elf asked in a low voice.

"Set your newfound servants upon them. They pose little threat. Now go, you must work through the night to be ready before dawn!"

The two figures retreated into the dark of the hallway. Only then were Kirsh and I released, and we whirled on our invisible assailant. I fumbled with my tinderbox and relit the candle just as the veil of invisibility lifted and we saw the female elf from earlier standing before us, a grim look on her face. She stood for a moment, her face twisting in a variety of emotions, breathing heavily, and then drawing a deep breath she intoned:

"In times of ancient myth now long forgot, known only in the Text Posthumous, envy black did drive bold Halmalil against his brother's house, perceiving not the web of lies spun thick and foul by Albier! Dread Albier who sought to rend the houses fair and wrest control of all their halls and holdings there in Dumis grand where tales are told. And so in later ages much dimin'sh'd we find the same deceit played out by grimmest Elfling, plotting here as once did Fersenbrith Calanth lay siege upon the minds of mighty mortals massed against his hall, with mage marks making mockery of liberty. Gecko-crows call omens dire into the nights of Eastern Aolin Sound, and like unto those birds come trav'lers twain to call a signal to the end of plans! But even gecko-crows might fly to fairer hands and thus disband those plans."

She looked at us expectantly.

Through the entire recitation I noticed a faint high pitched whining sound and by the time Elnor had finished her soliloquy I had realized it's source. Kirsh was, apparently, at his limit. The high pitched call emerging from his beak finally transitioned into something like a strangled scream.

"I can't do this, 'Ris! I can't listen to another history of elvish heroes that somehow, by some twisted convention, represents some other hidden message!"

To my astonishment, Elnor responded not with anger but with a relieved groan. "I know! On each and every day I warp my speech to be polite! O to shed the pretense!"

"Oh thank the Ancestors," Kirsh moaned, "I was beginning to think everyone here talked that way. I was ready to dive into the sea and never come back."

"Kirsh," I said reproachfully, somewhat irritated that he would threaten to abandon me and, more importantly, my book, but the two were locked in mutual outrage now and neither noticed.

"O, nay, my folk, the folk of West Ladur, speak plain their minds!" She waved her hand dismissively. "It's city elves, librarians of highest fame, that speak in naught but riddles."

"See it's exactly this sort of thing," Kirsh said smugly, "that makes me think I should never have left the shoreside! What use have clams for high culture, am I right?"

Elnor opened her mouth to reply but, realizing that without interjection, the conversation was likely to stretch well into the night, I loudly cleared my throat. "Don't you think," I said severely, "that we have rather more pressing matters to attend to? Now--Elnor, is it?--would you care to translate your previous speech into the common tongue for my feathered friend?"

Elnor rolled her eyes but acquiesced and, with the confusing formalities thankfully out of the way, we quickly ascertained several things:

First, that Vasilias was working with an elf named Lasale, a rather nasty piece of work who Elnor had some grudge against (she declined to explain this further, and I did not press). Lasale had been promised a library to rival the prime branch of the elves, and numerous other things besides, in order to buy his allegiance to the Lich-King.

Secondly, that there was a great chamber beneath the coast that could only be unlocked by one enchanted with a kind of aetheric key. Cyrohim bore this enchantment, which made it possible to raise and enter this chamber, which held the outpost's library books.

The chamber itself was not their aim, however. The chamber, an object of ancient and unknown origin, was simply an anchor that would enable the grand conjuration Vasilias proposed. This conjuration necessitated a piece of another distant world, which would act as a nexus for summoning--my stolen book.

Finally, as we had overheard, Lasale planned to bewitch each of the other acolytes in the night as the beast outside had been bewitched, preventing their interference and transforming them into his personal slaves.

Kirsh and I were distressed at this, but Elnor had been watching Lasale for several weeks and she had a plan...

The sun rose and steam rose from the beach. Kirsh and I watched from the woods as Lasale strode forth, with an entire troop of his fellow elves trailing zombie-like behind, the brilliant azure marks on their heads glowing in the warm light of dawn. The body of Renn Winmoore was already down on the beach, and Vasilias, its puppeteer, had it making various arcane gestures over the sand. Slowly, as we watched, the sand swept aside to reveal a domelike protrusion with a raised altar on top, which I presumed must serve as the entrance hatch. It served its other purpose now, though, as Vasilias placed my stolen book on the alter. I imagined their conversation: Lasale reports that the old man and the bird are gone, Vasilias--There! He waves his hand in dismissal. It is of no great import. But still, he turns and glances over at the assembled elves, who stand waiting on the threshold of the lighthouse.

And there is a pause.

The master is there, and six others, and Lasale stands beside him... but where is the ninth elf? Lasale, did you not bewitch all eight? (He thought he had, but in Elnor's bed lay a cunning simulacrum only, the truth of which he did not perceive in his haste!) Where is the ninth elf?!

And at that moment Elnor can wait no more. There is a flash, a radiant shimmer, from the top of the lighthouse, a light like an impossibly bright sun on an impossibly clear sea, and the air was suddenly filled with little bubbles of light that descended upon the whole area.

Kirsh and I nodded to each other, and we stepped, briefly, into the chaos of the Blind Eternities. For a moment, amidst the roil that was everything and nothing, there was a flash like countless cathedral walls rushing past. And then we landed back on Valjan, at the treeline.

For a moment, all was still, as we stood marvelling at the ease with which we had accomplished our task, for Lasale, Vasilias's servant, lay unconscious on the sand. After a moment, Vasilias also stepped back from the Blind Eternities where, crafty king, he had hidden when he sensed the sweeping scope of the sleep spell. Vasilias looked upon his fallen compatriot in surprise. Then, Winmoore's borrowed head turned to and fro, seeking us out, and finally alighted on our shadowed forms. "Raleris, Lorekeeper! Meddler! You have been a great nuisance to me."

"I have been a nuisance to you, sir!" I cried, somewhat irritated, stepping out into the light of the early morning sun. "I did not set YOUR library aflame, nor did I steal a book from you!"

"You know who I am, do you not?" Renn called, as though I had not spoken.

"You are an old man, like myself, so afraid of losing power that he did a very foolish thing and turned an entire city into a vessel for his soul! Yes I know you Vasilias, I know you quite well, I think!"

"You denied me once before, do you remember?"

"I stand by that decision even today!" I called back. "Now give me back my book, Vasilias, we've taken out your ritualist and I suspect strongly you need him for your spell!"

Renn laughed, and it was eerie to hear the cold laughter of a king in the voice of a youth. "You have taken nothing from me. If anything, you have made the next step all the easier. Lasale might have resisted this necessary step."

And with that, Vasilias, in the ghostly body of Renn Winmoore, dissolved into the body of the fallen elf. Lasale stood, brushing the sand from himself, and laughed once more. With a gesture, a crown of five colors appeared around his head and the patterns etched into the buried chamber's surface glowed with light. The sky grew dark as clouds appeared like a funeral veil.

"Oh dear," Kirsh murmured. "We could have planned this better."

"Yes this is all a bit ironic," I groaned. "Well, there's nothing for it. We must do what we can."

I stepped forward a few paces and raised a hand. "Do not think that you have won so easily, Vasilias," I called. "You must complete the ritual, and I am not so old yet that I have forgotten how a magical dual plays out."

Vasilias shook his borrowed head. "You are a foolish man if you believe you can stop me."

"Oh yes?" I said, "I should love to know from whence comes your certainty!"

"I am a king," Vasilias said simply. "You are a librarian." And with that he raised his hands in preparation for the grand incantation.

But I, Raleris the Lorekeeper, am a Planeswalker, and like Gods, Elder Dragons, and madmen, I do not blink.

Kirsh reprimanded me after the fact for my foolhardiness in opposing a Planeswalker as powerful and ancient as Vasilias. I reminded him, of course, that I was not so foolhardy as to touch the mind of an ancient god-emperor as he had done, and he squawked a bit under his breath at me but finally conceded my point.

I do not think it was so foolhardy, though, and explained my reasoning to him thus:

Vasilias is an ancient and powerful mage-king, indeed, with the mana of a whole pocket plane at his beck and call, not to mention the resources of Renn Winmoore and the elf Lasale. And I am a librarian.

Yet, I was there, in the flesh (such as it is), whereas Vasilias was there as a ghost within a ghost possessing an elf! And while he had access to all five colors of mana, and was using them all for the conjuration he had planned (they were visible like serpents of light writhing upon the ground, five colors of magic all entwined to change the fabric of a world!) three of the colors were borrowed, and all were channelled through the body of a mortal. I made a bet, and it was this: that if Vasilias shouted for the world to come to heel, and I commanded it to stay, his voice would break before my own. My old throat would hold true while his borrowed throat would rip and bleed with the force of his call.

Lasale's hands gestured in command and the world shuddered. His mouth commanded and the sky went dark. His arms waved and a cobweb of many lights spread across the air and sea.

From countless shores across countless planes I drew all my power to me and began to cast a counterritual. I felt, briefly, Kirsh call his own mana to himself but he did not join in my casting and in a moment I was too caught in the contest of wills to pay him further heed.

My magic manifested as great azure glowing drakes, which cut through the cobwebs of Vasilias's power with their wings.

Vasilias gestured with his borrowed flesh and borrowed magic and my counterritual was, itself, countered, blown away as if by an invisible and intangible squall.

Again I spoke and at my word the tethers of the spell threatened to come undone. For a moment it seemed as though the sky was a tent ready to flap away in a high breeze.

Again Vasilias moved Lasale's hands, this time manifesting the power of his young host. My very words were silenced in the roar of magic that issued forth, and it was only at the last moment that I was able to dissolve my form into seaspray, avoiding the fiery bolt of power.

My body became steam and then flesh again, and I raised my hands for another spell--too late! Vasilias, enraged by my impudence, now came in full force, and it seemed that a luminous skull was superimposed upon Lasale's own face. The terrible hollow eyes flashed--

It seemed as though a thousand, thousand thorns held me imprisoned and though I wept and cursed I could not move for the terror of their bitter sting, and as I stood ensnared they dug into my side like a syringe and something new and hideous was birthed in my belly.

It seemed as though I crawled upon a vast plain that was my own skin, and I clawed the fleshy earth, digging furrows and fissures until I was old, old, old, old, old!

It seemed as though I stood before a throng of horrors who waited for me to be born again, and as I shed the itchy wet skin of life and emerged as a being of sinew and bone and clockwork they gave a standing ovation, and I knew they were but one voice and one mind and in that mind--in His mind--I was what I had always secretly longed to be: at last, compleat. And as the book that I had laboured over fell from my metal hands the crowd became a cloud, a dark cloud that rolled over me and dissolved me completely.

But then at last it seemed as though there was a voice within that darkness, soft and musical, like birdsong.

"Your story need not end the way his did, old friend."

There came, then, a glowing being that cast aside the dark cloud and, in rapid flashes, I saw horrors of terrible shadow and luminous purpose do battle with what seemed at first scarecrows, then men of sack cloth filled with diamonds and sapphires, then a trick of the light as sun reflected upon water through dry shore grasses in a place where sand meets sky in a glittering horizon.

Kirsh of the Flats held my shoulder, his talons digging painfully into my skin, his eyes shut and his beak clenched in concentration. He had cast Vasilias's madness from me, though I could tell that it took much from him and drained much of the power he had drawn upon while I drew the emperor's ire.

His gamble had paid us both well. I looked across at where our opponent stood: Lasale seemed to be glowing from within, his lips twisted in a pained grimace, his teeth clenched, eyes luminous. As I watched, they seemed to fissure, as though his very flesh was crystallizing and then cracking. In that instant, I knew that we had won: Lasale was burning from the inside. He would die before Vasilias could complete the spell.

Then, in a split second, his body contorted as though someone had reached out and wrung reality. His mouth opened in a silent wail of pain and an ichor black as a Nightstalker's heart dripped from his ruined limbs. The etchings marking the surface of the subterranean chamber flashed in a rainbow of colors and then shone pure gold. There was a rumbling sound and great pillars screwed up from beneath the sand and sea in a complex array. A ray of light descended from the sky and Lasale's body was pinned grotesquely upright like an insect pinned to a specimen board as the light spread from his central mass to the pillar array. This would be the anchor, an anchor weighty enough to sink a distant land into the turbulent waters of the Blind Eternities to rest on the shores of Valjan. With a howling, the sky went out, and something began to come through.

Patting Kirsh's arm and gingerly removing his talon from my shoulder (he gave me a sheepish look when he realized how tightly he had gripped me) I sighed and shouted, "I think it's time to go, Kirsh. We've done all we could."

The aven shook his head and his expression grew determined. "Not all," he called. "There's still one more thing I can do for you." And before I could stop him, the fool spread his wings and leapt into the center of the maelstrom!

I shouted after him in horror, expecting him to be blasted by the energies that were now leaping from the pillars that he flew deftly through. As I watched, though, the bolts of magic struck him and glanced off. Ever industrious, he must have cast protection spells upon himself while I was in combat with Vasilias. He alighted on the sloping surface of the chamber's roof, snatched the book from where it lay with a static crackle of energy, and made to take off once more. In that moment, though, a small, steaming form staggered forth from within Lasale's smouldering, crucified wreckage.

It was Renn Winmoore, the spirit boy.

Kirsh, to my amazement, paused for a moment, then snatched up the boy, and flew back to me. As he alighted on the ground nearby, I saw why. Renn wore an expression not of domineering arrogance but of abject misery. Vasilias, for the moment, had been driven into retreat.

It was a good thing Kirsh grabbed him when he had the chance, for the other world that Vasilias had called now began to manifest on Valjan. We watched from our vantage point as the world began to ripple and change. Kirsh, exhausted, fell against the bole of the great tree-thing and (ever carefully despite his exhaustion) let Renn drop as well. I too, a great weariness upon me after our duel, found my legs sinking beneath me. I knelt before the wondrous magic that was remaking the world, and together, an aged man, a meek aven, and a horribly cursed ghost, we watched Valjan change to something else.

But what we saw was not the library.

Instead, we saw a blasted and ruinous landscape emerge, a wasted heath which swallowed up the shore and much of the sea in a rocky, weedy gloom. Upon this unwelcoming ground crawled strange humanoid forms. Before them, driven by them, were shambling fungoid creatures.

"What can this mean?" Kirsh murmured.

A strange suspicion crept upon me, and, turning to him, I begged him hand me the book he had risked his life to save from the planar overlay and wearily he handed it to me.

I read the spine, and began, quietly at first, then loudly as the sheer absurdity gripped me, to laugh.

The cover teamed with a multitude of strange creatures that had been carefully sculpted of the leather so that they seemed almost alive. On the spine was printed: Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII.

"I don't understand," Kirsh said. "What difference does it make what book he used?"

"It makes all the difference in the world," I chortled in what was probably a quite obnoxious and unhelpful a fashion. "Or all the worlds, I should say!" Gathering, with effort, some semblance of sobriety, I explained: "Most of the books of the Infinite Library are from the Library itself, but some are books that I have gathered myself, because I preferred not to dig through infinite archives in order to find the existing library copy, or because there was no library copy. This book is not a book of my plane. It is a book from Dominaria, which I acquired some time ago after the Mending."

"Then," Kirsh breathed, realization dawning, mirth to mirror my own breaking at the edges of his exhausted voice, "Vasilias did not summon your plane at all, but--"

"Sarpadia. He called Sarpadia to this world, thinking he called my library. Sarpadia with its thrulls and its fungus men and its long history of failed empires." At this, I began to laugh, and this time Kirsh wearily began to laugh with me.

"Good," a soft voice whispered, halting our laughter. Kirsh and I looked between us to where Renn lay. "I'm glad we failed," the ghost boy continued, easing back to lie and stare blankly at the sky.

"Do not say 'we,'" I said gently. "You acted at his behest, not your own, not as a collaborator."

Doubt flickered across him, but for a few moments he said no more. Below us on the shore, the sky was returning to normal and the early morning sun was bathing the thrulls, who were having trouble keeping the thallids from wandering off. They were, themselves, rather disoriented, after all. In the distance, I saw that Elnor was trotting towards us on the jungle verge, skirting well clear of the Sarpadian landscape.

After a few moments, Renn spoke again. "We were... he was... never going to give the library to Lasale. The next step was to summon it from Valjan to Ariva. This was just like... passing a letter to a friend to give to someone else." He shook his head and continued staring up at the sky.

"Ho, Elnor!" I called, for she was nearly upon us now, "you may find this interesting. It seems your former nemesis was never the ultimate intended recipient of my library!"

Elnor was brandishing a rather large, dangerous looking etching needle in one hand and, as she stood lightly on the sand, panting from her run up the beach, she waved it wildly at, alternately, Renn and the strangeness on the beach below. "Our enemy reclines beside you like a friend, and on once azure shores now sits a blasted waste beset by nightmare beasts! I beg of you, please clarify the vision I perceive! Am I beset by dreams from my own hand, ensnared in my own spell?"

"It's fine, Elnor," I said, "This is Renn Winmoore, he's been possessed for quite some time."

"It's a long story," Kirsh sighed.

"A ghost itself possessed!" Elnor marvelled, shaking her head.

"And as for the beach..." I gestured dismissively, "Our enemy, like all who research hastily, chose a poor book to use as the anchor for his endeavours."

"I'm sorry about what happened to the other elf," Renn said mournfully, struggling to sit up. "I... I didn't want to..." He trailed off again and cast his eyes downward dejectedly.

Elnor looked between the three of us. "What grisly fate did Lasale meet?"

Kirsh gestured to the beach. "Vasilias--ah, the thing that was possessing Renn--just sort of... wrung him dry of the last mana he needed to complete the ritual. What's left of him is down there."

We followed Kirsh's gaze and noted that a thallid was poking curiously at the huddled bundle that was once the elf Lasale. A faint grim smile played on Elnor's lips. "A fitting fate indeed."

Kirsh stretched to his feet and began digging in his satchel. "Oh, Renn, I almost forgot. I have something for you." And with that, Kirsh, kind heart, pulled out Renn's old jacket, left in my library, oh, could it be only a day ago? Renn looked up in surprise and timidly held out his hands to receive the jacket, placing it close beside him on the log.

For a moment the four of us sat in silence. Then Renn spoke once more.

"I think he'd like to bring Ariva here, if he could, but I haven't got the power, and neither does he. It's too much. But there might be solutions in your library, sir, and he must have thought he could get into it more easily than he could get into the big library here."

I shrugged, and chuckled somewhat darkly. "Maybe that was his reasoning, but maybe not. He came to me once in the later days of his empire, and I think he came to my predecessor once or twice as well. We always turned him away, and the Library is powerful--proof against the incursions of even one such as he if we expect the incursion, at least. Perhaps he simply finally found a way to get the better of me, and could not resist the temptation."

Kirsh groaned. "Don't tell me that, 'Ris. To nearly die because an aged corpse wanted to spite you... it's too stupid a story."

To my immense pleasure, the faintest shadow of a smile showed on Renn's features. "But you got the old man's goat, didn't you? You really put one over on him."

I smiled in return. "I suppose I did, didn't I? Not only did we cheat him of the library, we cheated him of you, too."

"Be silent, librarian."

The voice held no rancour, that was what chilled me to the bone. It was simply disdainful, as if I had offended his sensibilities. And in the moment when Vasilias's voice issued forth like a tomb door opening, I knew that he had bound all three of us, in body and in magic. We were frozen to the spot, capable only of watching helplessly. The voice spoke once more: "You are needed in Ariva. Boy."

And with that, Renn was pulled from Valjan, into the Blind Eternities and, presumably, back to Vasilias's citadel. In that instant the spell, cast with the last remnants of his power, broke, and all three of us staggered. Kirsh cried out, staggered to his feet, and made to follow, but I gripped his arm and shook my head. "It is folly to follow him now, my friend. We are weak and he has an entire plane at his command. We must not follow."

Kirsh's wings fluttered in consternation, his whole body seemed to tense for a moment in indecision, and then he sagged. The three of us remained still for a few moments, Elnor blinking in bleary-eyed confusion at the two of us, and Kirsh and I simply staring at nothing.

Then, Kirsh glanced at the ground where Renn had been, and said, dully, "He forgot his jacket again." Then he began to weep.

I stood, intending to embrace my friend, hoping to offer the healer some comfort, but upon rising I found that the world was strangely tilted around me, and a sharp pain came from my side. Some new magic, I thought dimly as the ground rose to meet me. Well, I said to myself calmly, I'll find out what it is first thing after I wake. I thought I heard the cry of a gull, perhaps, or some other shore bird, and then all was silence.

------------------------------

I awoke in our small cell in the lighthouse monastery. I dimly became aware that I had been stripped of my tattered clothes and my side was bound. I gazed around the room blearily and quickly noticed Kirsh perched atop the back of a large and sturdy chair, an open book in his hand. Despite the precariousness of his position, his eyes were closed and his body puffed in and out gently in sleep. Noticing an intense thirst and hunger I cast around for a glass of water and was pleased to find one, and a plate of bread and cheese beside it (as well as some Elvish food which I ignored), on the small table beside my bed. Kirsh, it seemed, had provided well for me in my sleep.

In reaching for the cup, unfortunately, I made some slight noise, which was enough to wake the aven. For a moment he cast around the room in alarm, but when his eyes settled on me, awake and seemingly well, he relaxed somewhat. "How are you feeling?" he cooed quietly, gingerly putting the book down on the chair, then stepping down himself and coming to my side.

"Fine," I answered, "though parched and ravenous. I have a hunger worthy of someone who just did battle with a mad, dead Planeswalker!" I chuckled. "But what of you? You seem to have hardly rested. Have you been caring for me this whole time?"

Kirsh shrugged his wings and gave me the look that I had decided was Aven for "sheepish." "With some help from the acolytes. They were very accommodating after Elnor explained that we had helped rescue them from servitude to an ancient Lich-King." I chuckled slightly but Kirsh had a solemn look on his face. Quietly, he continued. "The infection was bad, Raleris. It had started spreading again."

I sighed and nodded, not particularly surprised. "It has been many, many years since I drew upon such vast quantities of mana. The phthisis must have enjoyed the feast."

Kirsh nodded sadly. "I managed to halt the spread once more, but if it bursts free just a few more times..."

I sighed again and took a hearty gulp of water. "I really must find an apprentice soon. How many more enchantments can you slap onto my old organs before the phthisis sinks into them and consumes me utterly?"

The healer looked dejected at this, but said nothing, knowing that it was a rhetorical question. We both knew that the answer was "too few."

"I think," I said, idly breaking off two pieces of bread and passing one to Kirsh, "I've lingered for too long in my library, biding my time, taking notes on potential candidates... Perhaps I was scared that making a decision meant cementing the reality of my situation. But what are my Library's books for if not for reading? What does it matter if we save them from Vasilias if I die and leave them with no one to look after them?"

Kirsh nodded, swallowing his bread. "I understand that feeling, 'Ris. Although you've been all over the Multiverse while I hid on Ameran. You shouldn't be hard on yourself."

"And neither should you, Kirsh," I said calmly, "certainly not if it leads you to plan suicide missions to rescue a fellow 'walker from the clutches of a near god."

The aven started and stared at me. I met his gaze. "Come now, how long have we known one another? Long enough, certainly, to know you have a terrible need to martyr yourself. How many days has it been, Kirsh, really, since the battle?" He shuffled uncomfortably. "And you've had nary a sleep during the whole time, I expect. What do you wish to prove by this?"

"'Ris, I've got to help Renn somehow. I must try to break Vasilias's hold on his mind."

"Well you certainly won't be able to do that in Vasilias's very stronghold!" I waved the block of cheese at him. "Be strategic. Continue your studies into the mind. You are making progress, you know you are, you banished Vasilias's madness spells from me!"

This, if anything, made my friend look even more uncomfortable. "I did, but there were... things waiting for me when I entered that battlefield..."

I waited but Kirsh said no more. I shrugged as well as I could while still reclining. "And yet, here you stand, and here I lie, both weary but ultimately well, for the moment. We are both old men, Kirsh. Is it not time to put aside our fears? Although not," I added hastily, "in such a way that we end up walking straight into a trap set by a crafty undead emperor, of course."

At this, Kirsh chuckled. "This, Raleris, is why I spend so much time keeping you alive. You're the only Planeswalker I've met with any sense. I will keep studying, and try to set aside my fears.

We agreed to keep our ears open for any news of Renn. Between Kirsh travelling from plane to plane in search of the knowledge he needed, and my own redoubled efforts to find an apprentice, my hopes are that we might find him before Vasilias can make him do too much further mischief. With that pact made, I badgered Kirsh to finally get some rest. He admitted that it had, as I suspected, not been hours but days since I had collapsed, and the poor healer found himself protesting less and less coherently--he was nodding off as he stood by my bed.

It was perhaps a week later when I felt well enough to leave the hospitality of the outpost. The bones of the unfortunate elf Lasale lay upon the beach, scattered either from the ministrations of the strange predators of the Archipelago or from the rough treatment of the Sarpadian Thrulls who, for several days, laid siege to the outpost. From time to time Elnor would visit my chamber and express, in her hauntingly beautiful voice, how much she was enjoying her newfound use for her etching tools, often in such poetic detail that I became nauseous and Kirsh made excuses to leave the room. On the dawn of the third day after I awoke, we found that the siege had lifted. The displaced patch of Sarpadia had gone home.

From this, I suspect that Vasilias would have been disappointed in any case, even had we not foiled his plot. Renn, it seems, was correct in thinking that Vasilias requires far greater power to plant Ariva on Valjan permanently. But Dominia continues to move forward into the future and we Planeswalkers must learn, perhaps, to live with disappointment. Those of us, that is, that once tasted the power to reshape worlds to our whims. Worlds like Valjan still bear some echoes of the grand manipulations of the past, and in drawing upon their power we call upon the echoes of a glory long past.

I like Valjan, and since my first encounter with it I have been back a number of times. I excuse myself by saying that I am visiting my new contact there, particularly now that she has made her way back to the central library and is beginning to make some progress in unravelling the histories of the plane for me, but in truth my deeper motivation is to soak in the strange virility of Valjan's magic.

It nearly makes me feel young again.