Chloe awoke in a field. Her body was cushioned by soft grass. The air was chilly on her skin. It was still night-time. That much had gone to plan. But immediately she sensed something was wrong.

“Confound it! How could this have happened?” Hotzeh was saying nearby.

Chloe clambered to her feet with a yawn. It was quite disorientating waking up in a different place from where you had gone to sleep, but no more so than it might be had she fallen asleep on a bus or an aeroplane. She scanned the darkness. There was Hotzeh. There was Katetheuna. But where…?

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Chloe asked, her heartbeats getting quicker.

“We’ve lost Hannah,” said Katetheuna.

“What?!” said Chloe. A ball of fear started to swell in her stomach. “How?!”

“She ran into a problem somewhere during her dreamtravel and she hasn’t arrived here with the rest of us.”

“There was interference, I could feel it!” said Hotzeh. “The enemy knew we were coming! This is terrible, terrible!”

“Try to stay calm, brother,” said Katetheuna. “We can’t change what’s happened now. The best thing we can do is try to find her as quickly as possible.”

“W-where could she be?” asked Chloe, her voice quivering.

“If the enemy did interfere with her dreamtravel,” said Katetheuna, “then they probably know about our mission. We’ve been compromised. They must have captured a Larakian agent somewhere and got the information out of them. Our best option is to make straight for the house of our agents in the area. Come, Chloe.”

Chloe was just about to step forward when a picture dropped into her own mind. It was simply there, in her imagination, as if she had thought it up herself. Except unmistakably, she had not done this; it had popped in from somewhere else. She had been trained to recognise this when it happened, which she still managed to do even in her panic-stricken state.

“Hang on,” said Chloe. “I think I’m seeing something with my gift.”

“Ah, good!” said Katetheuna. “What do you see?”

“A big, black dragon,” said Chloe, feeling a little foolish, but choosing to believe in her gift anyway. “It has huge wings and spiky horns on its head and spikes down its back. And now it’s changing. It’s morphing into a man, in black armour the same colour as the dragon, with spikes on his shoulders and on his helmet.”

Hotzeh and Katethuena were silent.

“What do you think it means?” said Chloe after a few moments.

“That sounds like Khilliarkos to me,” said Katetheuna at last.

“Khilliarkos?” said Chloe, puzzling at another strange name. “Who’s that?”

“Come, we haven’t a moment to lose,” said Katetheuna. She strode forwards, taking Hotzeh’s arm so that he could walk with her, and beckoned for Chloe to follow. As they walked, she explained. “Khilliarkos is a very powerful general in Echthros’s army. If he’s here then they must have known we were coming. This is very serious.”

“Why is he so powerful?” said Chloe. She was more than a little scared.

“Khilliarkos used to be a Larakian warrior-messenger with the gift of wisdom,” said Hotzeh. “But he went over to Shul one day when someone close to him was lost on a mission in Dahma. Now, because of his total devotion to Shul, he has the power to take the shape of a dragon. He is brutal, merciless and wicked. And he hates Larakians with a passion.”

“It sounds like you’ve met him before…” said Chloe, trying to lighten the mood of the conversation with an attempt at a joke. She felt queasy in her stomach.

She received an answer she wasn’t expecting. “We have,” said Katetheuna. “It was Khilliarkos who made Hotzeh blind. And… And…”

“Don’t, sister, you don’t need to tell her about that,” said Hotzeh.

“No, she should know,” said Katetheuna. She took a deep breath. “And he murdered my husband, many years ago. Why do you think I live with this stuffy old fart?” She made an attempt at her own joke. It was equally as successful. “I’m much too old to still be living with my twin brother.”

“You’re twins too?” said Chloe, her eyebrows stretching high.

“Oh, yes my dear, we never told you that, did we? Non-identical twins though, of course. I moved back in with Hotzeh to help look after him after he went blind and I lost my husband to Khilliarkos.”

If Chloe was sacred before, she was terrified now. What was going to happen to her own twin sister Hannah at the hands of this horrible person?

“What should we do?” she said. “Should we dreamtravel back to Larakia? Should we go and get help?”

“There’s no time for that now,” said Katetheuna. “Do not fear, young one. The One True King chose us for this mission, so he will give us the strength to complete it. He is with us. We will find Hannah and claim her back. Do not worry. Ah, here we are.”

They had arrived at one of the city gates of Ubal. It was not an especially large or wealthy city and so its gates were not locked at night time. It would be easy enough for people to steal into it on a boat on one of the five rivers that flowed through it anyway. So all they had to contend with was a single token sentry on duty who had fallen asleep at his chair in the little guard-house built into the wall. They walked right past him without any problem.

Ubal was built out of wood stone. There were still one or two people on the roads in these small hours, most of them looking decidedly suspicious, but they were paid no attention. Katetheuna had memorised a map of the city so she led them along the streets to Sepher Street, occasionally pausing to check with Hotzeh about a choice of direction, paying careful attention to the blind seer. It felt strange to Chloe to be here, in another city in this strange world. Though in many ways it was not so different from Ayin, the air was a lot warmer here, even at night-time, and felt closer, more pressing. But she did not have many thoughts to spare to notice this. She could not stop herself from thinking about Hannah. Where was she? What had happened to her? Had the enemy really interfered in her dreamtravel? She was desperate to know if Hannah was ok.

They arrived in Sepher Street and found a particular house. Katetheuna knocked on the door and it was opened almost immediately by a dark-skinned man and woman with a thick black beard and long, plaited black hair respectively.

“Skopos! Huphantia! It’s so good to see you,” said Katetheuna.

“Katetheuna, Hotzeh!” said the man, Skopos. The four of them exchanged kisses on each cheek. “And this must be one of the young sent-ones. But we thought there were two?”

“Yes, this is Chloe. There were two, but the other was intercepted during her dreamtravel. We must find the nearest Shulite base as soon as possible.”

“Yes, at once,” said the woman, Huphantia. “Come inside, our children are already in bed.” She ushered them in. “This confirms our worst fears. We had word from an escaped Larakian captive from Shul whom we helped guide through Ubal recently that another of his teammates had been captured and probably tortured. He knew of the latest forthtelling about the heir. He is on his way back to Larakia, but he must not have reached you yet.”

“No, no, we had not heard of this yet,” said Hotzeh as they sat down for a moment in the couples’ sitting room on some chairs next to a loom. “This is most unfortunate. They must be hunting the heir too. We have to find him as soon as possible.”

“Find Hannah, you mean,” said Chloe.

“Yes,” said Hotzeh. “Hannah too.”

“Well, we might be able to give you a starting point,” said Skopos. “We think we’ve managed to track down the location of the key Shulite operatives in this city. There’s a house in Choresh Avenue inhabited by a couple who work in beauty treatments. Here you go; we’ve drawn a map.”

“How do you know it’s Shulite?” asked Katetheuna.

“Because they have the Sceptre of Rhabdos, which was stolen long ago, displayed in their living room window. We think they’re trying to use it as bait to lure Larakians to their house in order to kill them. Maybe even the heir, now that they know he is in the area.”

“I see,” said Katetheuna. “That would seem to be something of a giveaway.”

“Um. What’s the Sceptre of Rhubadub?” asked Chloe.

“The Sceptre of Rhabdos is a Larakian treasure,” said Katetheuna. “It used to be carried and wielded by the Steward-Kings and -Queens of Larakia, but it was lost by one of them on a mission to Shul when it was stolen by Shulites in a terrible battle. We must go to this house at once. The Sceptre will draw the heir to itself, and it is also the place where we are most likely to find Hannah.”

“Echthros must value these operatives highly if he has entrusted them with the sceptre,” said Huphantia. “Go carefully. These times are strange. I have not had time to tell you everything, but a few months ago, a young boy broke into our house and stole our Book. This is not completely unheard of, but it is still very unusual. Watch out for yourselves.”

“Thank you for the warning,” said Hotzeh. “We will stay vigilant.”

“The One True King goes with you,” said Skopos, using the Larakian way of saying farewell.

“And the One True King goes with you too,” said Hotzeh, returning the send-off on their behalf.

They left the house again and made straight for Choresh Avenue, walking swiftly through the dark. Katetheuna and Hotzeh seemed tense to Chloe, taut.

“Remember all that you have been taught in the last months,” was all that Katetheuna said to Chloe. “Tonight you will have the opportunity to put it to the test, most likely.”

Chloe only gulped.

When they got to Choresh Avenue itself, a wide, proud street lined with magnificent trees and stately homes, they walked along it until they found a house marked on the map which had pebbles in front of the entrance, two main wings going off from a central building and tall, wide windows. They were also immediately disconcerted to see that a light was on in one room behind the curtains and some of the windows has been smashed.

“This is the one,” said Katetheuna.

“You think Hannah is going to be inside that house?” asked Chloe.

“More than likely,” said Katetheuna. “Or she will be soon. It’s our best bet, Chloe. But try to stay focused. As well as rescuing Hannah, we need to watch out for the boy we’re here to find. So stay looking out for a young teenage boy, with brown hair, with a scar on his right cheek.”

“How are we going to get in?” said Chloe.

“The usual way,” said Katetheuna. “We are not agents of Shul that we would skulk around in the darkness, hiding in the shadows and breaking into places where we are not welcome. We will go up to the front door and knock. But first, we need as much help as we can get: Hotzeh, what do you see with your gift?”

“I see a girl crossing a threshold in the light of the sunrise,” said Hotzeh. “I believe Hannah will be back with us by dawn.”

“Wonderful. Chloe, what do you see?”

“I see a group of young boys, surrounding us, with stones in their hands. Some of them are scowling.”

“Oh. That’s a very specific picture to see with your gift in your imagination. Well done.”

“I’m not seeing it in my imagination! It’s what I can see with my eyes right now!”