Up ahead in the distance the outline of the Tower towered, looming over their heads like a foreboding symbol of the danger they were becoming entangled with.

They didn't really need to be reminded. 

The tower's massive granite walls, quarried from the nearby ridges during a time before time, glistened as the drops of morning dew each in turn caught and reflected the kind golden hope of the sure-footed sunbeams. 

Just above the main buttress of the tower, an open window opened into a spacious study room. Inside, three massive oak desks, arranged as semicirclish as three massive oak desks can be arranged, were rendered nearly invisible by heaps upon heaps of voluminous volumes, scrawled-upon scrolls, and manually scripted manuscripts, all crackling, yellow, brown, dusty, and exhausted. 

At the center a solitary figure pored over a handful of pages, his hands flat on the table with the paper in between. His mind was so intent on deciphering the meaning and thinking of its mysterious author that his well-trained sense of responsibility found it difficult to arouse his ears to account for the dull buzzing that was, it hoped, about to break his concentration. 

There was something majestically serene about Chronius the Elder. He had presided as the Shamash, the head of the Council of Eight, for over four phases and another dozen or so quinti. In his heavy purple robe, richly embroidered with golden thread, he looked the part. He embodied the traits of command, fitness, and fitness to command, and was quite ageless. Being the oldest, the wisest and the most well-versed man in all forms of magic, all eight of the Eight had unanimized that Chronius become the ninth. And he had been by no means offended, taking to the task of deciphering the latest state secret with an energetic fervor and a strength in doing battle with enigmas surpassed only by the particular enigma that he was presently doing battle with. 

"Ah! Part of it, at long last! Translation reads... oh, here it is!" he said aloud, trying to block out the annoyance, "'Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.' And then, 'Corporation,' ah, what? Oh, that's a chee, there, and a thie, so it reads, 'tee-shirts, stupid, bloody Thursday--'" 

The buzzing was persistent. His conscience got the better of his fascination. He slammed his hand down. The buzz stopped. 

"What?" he demanded of the empty room. 

"Alron P. is here to see you, Guardian Chronius," replied the intercom. 

"Send them in." 

An uncomfortable cough. "'Them,' Honor?" 

A dim voice issued from the speaker:"He must know I'm with you, Al." 

Another dim voice: "Makes sense." 

"Them, Sir Prent," Chronius replied coldly, as he sat down in his chair by the part of the desk nearest the door. Slowly, calculatedly, he drew his breath and a KLita 987 twentythree set to deadly force. Inralion was not supposed to get involved. He /knew/ that he knew that. Why did Inralion always have to be such a nuisance in Temple business? And now he was trying to learn more, as if he didn't know enough high-level secrets already. Well, murder was no new game to Chronius; it was one that he had played many times before, and Chronius played to win. 

Which is generally a good thing if you consider the replay potential if one were to play to lose. Natural wisdom such as this was not uncommon to Chronius. There was little doubt that he would be generally in charge of things for quite some time to come. 

Alron and Inralion followed the corridor from the airy lounge to Chronius' office, displaying an amount of caution second only to the amount of death they felt lay at the other end. The corridor turned and, some may say conforming without complaint, so did they, just out of Prent's view and almost into Chronius'.

Meanwhile, back in the lounge, Edison Maxwell Township reclined on a cellophane-covered, simulated faux-ersatz would-be plastickishlike couchesque. He relaxed quite comfortably, which, being an impossible state for a patron of such a piece of furniture, made him look quite suspicious. And such suspicions -- suspicions, that is, of his possibly having something to hide -- would not have been entirely unfounded. Because Edison Maxwell Township, ex-New Yorker, attempting magician, and amateur time-traveler, was not having a very good day.