The red-haired warrior started to shake his head. “I was going to say impossible, and then I realized that for Abraham nothing is impossible. Did he tell you why?” Prometheus asked. But before his sister could answer, he spun around to look behind him, quickly scanning the edges of the encroaching forest. All morning he’d had the feeling that they were being followed. Although nothing moved in the city, the surrounding countryside teemed with life: he’d even spotted serpents that he’d thought had died out long ago. There were monstrous lizards in the rivers, and thunderbirds still soared high in the skies. But he didn’t think it was a beast on their trail. On two separate occasions, he’d caught the smell of something rank and rotten, something long dead. He’d seen nothing, yet he knew this was not just his imagination: there was something in the forest, watching them.

“Abraham believes the world will end…,” the slight red-haired woman with the huge round green eyes said.

Prometheus laughed. “He’s been promising that for centuries. If he says it long enough, then one day he’ll be right.”

Even though they were alone in the vast city, Zephaniah lowered her voice. “He has entered into an alliance with Chronos…”

Prometheus’s face twisted in disgust.

“I believe the Master of Time has given him a date for the end of the world.”

“I would not trust that old monster as far as I could throw him.”

Zephaniah smiled at the sudden image. Her brother, Prometheus, was immensely strong, and Chronos was tiny. Rolling up the map, she stuck it into the metal tube she wore strapped across her back. “This way?” she asked.

Prometheus took a last glance over his shoulder before turning back to his sister. “No, it’s this way. The library should be at the end of this street.”

The two Elders had been traveling for ten days now and were both exhausted, but at last their goal was in sight.

The first part of their journey had been relatively straightforward. Leaving Danu Talis, they had traveled across the world, jumping from leygate to leygate, moving east to west, following the setting sun, until they reached the place where, legend had it, the Earthlords, Ancients and Archons had fought in the Time Before Time. Nothing grew in this devastated place, and intense heat had turned the earth to shining glass. The cataclysmic battle had upset the earth’s magnetic forces so that even the ley lines no longer functioned properly. None of those who had jumped through the final leygate-a perfectly circular hole in a cliff face-had returned; their screams still echoed through the gates even though centuries had passed.