More Than Once Upon a Time 1 More than once upon a time, Hubley Mims hurried through the deepest caverns of the Dwarves.  More than once upon a time because, in this particular place, at this particular time, there was more than one Hubley Mims. Irritably she wondered why she had allowed her older self to talk her into this ridiculous situation in the first place.  She should have asked for more explanation.   But no, she had to rush off the moment the prize was dangled before her eyes.  Just because she was a wizard of the ninth order, and a chronathurge, was no reason not to learn to look before she leapt. She was invisible, of course.  Her older self had done that much.  “No one would ever understand if they saw both of us at the same time,” the older had explained.  But invisibility is only useful when you’re following someone, not when you’re the one in the lead.  Which was exactly where Hubley found herself after the party she was following took a couple of wrong turns, then doubled back on top of her to find the road. She felt much better when she found a side passage to hide in till the party passed her by.  Pulling her cloak tight about her, she ducked into the dark tunnel as her unsuspecting pursuers appeared around the curve in the road above.  The light from the older Hubley’s staff cast long shadows through the rubble on the tunnel floor, illuminating a frog’s face carved into the stone arch above as the younger slipped inside. A few steps from the entrance the younger Hubley stopped and pressed herself against the side of the rock wall.  The smooth stone felt comfortably hard against her back.  Resting, she watched the shadows in the loway shorten with the approach of the company outside.  Finally she could follow again, instead of scrambling in the lead.  Presuming, of course, that her older self was not going to lead them this way. She looked down the tunnel in the other direction and what she saw almost stopped her heart.  Far down the passage, where there had been nothing a moment before, a thin light now flickered against the ceiling.  She looked back at the loway, hoping the party had just come opposite the opening and that some shard of Bryddin craft was reflecting their torchlight.  But there was nothing there.  She turned back again towards the other end of the tunnel.  Yes, the light was definitely there.  This was no trick of the eyes. Oh great, she thought.  Just her luck to pick a passage with a group of sissit coming from the opposite direction.  It couldn’t be anything else this deep into the earth.   Even if she managed to slip out unseen back to the main tunnel, the creatures behind her would still see the light of the other party.  There would be a fight, and who knew what would happen then.  She would have to take care of the sissit herself.  Maybe this was the reason the older Hubley had wanted her along in the first place. She moved deeper into the narrow side tunnel.  The light grew brighter against the ceiling.  Hearing footsteps and ragged panting ahead and below, she decided the corridor must dip downward, and considered tossing a little flame down the tunnel.   But fireballs were notoriously hard to manage in small spaces.  Besides, the noise would surely attract the attention of the others out in the loway.  No, she needed a quieter solution. She made up her mind and stopped a few feet in front of the dip in the passage.  The splash of light widened against the ceiling as it came closer.  A simple false wall would keep any sissit occupied for more than enough time to let the party pass by outside.   She just hoped they wouldn’t hear her cast the spell. She raised her arms and chanted in as low a voice as possible, “By rock and vein, with earthen groan; Raise a wall of seeming stone.” The walls of the tunnel seemed to sigh around her; the passage went dark again.   The sound of footsteps and heavy breathing disappeared.  She touched the new wall with her fingers, feeling the cool stone.  The barrier would last a couple of hours.  She had not exerted her full magic in the casting.  More than enough to keep any sissit at bay.  Sissit were many things, hungry chief among them, but their mage lore was weak.  A sissit conjurer would be hard-pressed to summon the skill required to pass her barricade. She turned back to the main passage.  Barely a minute had passed since she first noticed the light flickering on the ceiling.  The six travelers moved cautiously by the doorway, clustered around the light from the elder Hubley’s staff.  Two were of a sort she had never even seen before.  Diggers, the older Hubley had called them.  They were not much taller than children, but solidly built, like small men.  The other three had the look of well-traveled soldiers. One of these, the woman, stopped with an arrow notched to her bow as she came even with the passage.  She started forward to peer into the darkness, but a word from the older Hubley called her back. “No time for that, Canna.”  The senior Hubley’s voice echoed along the rocky walls.   “We’re near the pit now, I’m sure of it.  The road doesn’t descend much further.” Canna gave one last suspicious look at the passageway, then turned away. She had barely rejoined the others when suddenly, from the hidden gloom in the tunnel behind the younger Hubley, there was a loud crash and boom.  The younger Hubley turned in surprise and saw a single wild figure rushing towards her, silhouetted in the light that had sprung back up in the passage much brighter than before.  It was followed by the harsh shouts and hoots of many more sissit, and a flight of black arrows that clattered weakly against the ceiling above her head.  Without another thought Hubley turned and ran back out to the loway.  Sissiti arrows were generally poisoned even if they were notoriously bad shots.  And whatever was leading them, sissit or human, had passed her spell with ease.  If it came to a fight, her place was with the party outside. She raced swiftly down the edge of the loway toward the others, who had turned to confront the commotion behind them.  The three fighters, arrows notched on their bowstrings, formed a short line at the far bend of the road, while the older Hubley and the diggers stood behind them. The party loosed two quick volleys at the sissit as the pale creatures came swarming out into the road.  The sissit pulled up in surprise at the attack.  Then a fresh flight of the creatures came boiling out in a tangle of arms and legs, pushing the vanguard out into the middle of the passage.  Their fishy white skins glowed in the light of the elder Hubley’s staff.  There were at least thirty of them.  A massive sissit brandishing a great oval shield led them; he raised his shield threateningly when he saw the party below.  In response the elder Hubley raised her staff and called out a spell in a short, harsh voice.  A crash burst in the younger Hubley’s ears and half a dozen sissit lay jumbled on top of one another, felled in a flash of light.  She expected the rest to turn and run, for sissit, being born in magic, had no heart to fight with wizards.  But the shield had kept the leader unharmed and, with a harsh shout, he jumped forward and rushed the little party.  And still more sissit, an entire tribe it seemed, came bursting out of the tunnel behind him. “Quickly!”  shouted the elder Hubley.  “We can’t fight them all!  Down the tunnel!” She grabbed the closest digger by the back of his cloak and pushed him hurriedly before her.  The soldiers backed after them, firing arrows at their pursuers.  The invisible Hubley went flying after them down the road. Ahead the passage continued to curve gently down and to the right.  Canna looked up sharply at the sound of the invisible Hubley going past her, but she lacked the time just now to investigate strange noises.  And Hubley was in such a rush she could barely stop when she came full onto the other Hubley and the digger standing at the very end of the road.  Beyond them lay a great gulf.  Her boots skidded in the dust as she barely missed tumbling into the void. “What was that?” asked one of the diggers, looking straight at the invisible Hubley. “A lizard,” said the elder. The digger did not look convinced.  He stared at the spot where he thought he had heard the noise.  Hubley stood completely still, her heart pounding beneath her cloak.  Then the digger looked away as the rearguard arrived. “They’ll be on us in a minute,” said one of the men.  “We convinced them to pause a bit back there, but we didn’t stop them.”  He chewed his lip at the sight of the sheer cliff where the road ended, and kicked a loose stone out into the blackness.  It disappeared into the void without a sound. “There’s a ledge about three feet down,” said the other.  He peered on hands and knees over the edge into the darkness.  “We can hold them off from there as long as our arrows and your magic hold out.” “We won’t need that.” The older Hubley turned her attention to a patch of the floor in the middle of the loway.  She was hunting around on the rock floor, sweeping the gravel away into the swallowing depths with her boot as she searched. “There.  I’ve found it.”  She pointed to an iron ring embedded in the stone at her feet.   “You don’t think I led you into a trap, do you?  Here, Omarose.  Give me a hand with this.  I’m not as strong as a Dwarf, but you might be.” She tapped the ring with her staff.  The second man slung his bow over his shoulder and reached down to grab the ring with both hands.  Bending his knees, he began to lift.  The muscles in his neck bulged, but nothing happened. “Keep trying.  That door is old.  Avender, Canna.  Welcome to Vonn Kurr, the last Deep before the Abyss.  Now, then.  Look to your bows.” The sissit came howling down the tunnel.  They knew their prey was cut off from escape.  Stopping a short bowshot from the party, their leader came forward once more, its Dwarven shield held carefully before it.  The invisible Hubley slipped over the edge of the cliff to the thin ledge, where she could watch what might happen in relative safety. Omarose was still straining at the iron ring.  To give him more time, the elder Hubley turned to face the sissit.  They hooted at her approach and waved their bows and axes over their heads; but they took a couple of steps backwards as well. Their leader shook his shield.  “You give up!”  he called loudly, but his tone was more wheedling than demanding.  The older Hubley’s magic had scared them all.  They watched her warily as she stood before them in the tunnel, her staff braced on the floor before her.  The magic glow from its tip cast a light upwards across her chin, hollowing her eyes and cheeks in black shadow.  A harsh sorceress, all cold anger and fierce justice.  Even her younger self found the sight fearsome. The sissit leader shook the Dwarven shield again.  In the old and battered metal Hubley discerned the image of a coiled serpent, its mouth locked around a great jewel fixed to the shield’s center. “You not scare us,” the sissit cried.  “I carry great emblem of Ydderri!  I guard way to city and worm!  We kill you sister!  We kill you!” He shook his shield again and then, quick and furtive, tossed a large, smooth stone at Hubley from the end of a hidden sling.  Hubley took a short step to her left and the stone shot past her and into the great gloom beyond.  Then the older Hubley raised her staff and turned its length parallel to the ground. “Flame!”  she said simply, and a bolt of fire shot out from the two ends of the staff into the crowd on either side of the leader, followed by squeals of pain and the sudden smell of charred flesh. “I have it!” Omarose shouted as he heaved a round block of stone up out of the floor, exposing the dark hole beneath.  The sissit, who had fallen back under Hubley’s attack, rushed forward again, a dozen warriors replacing those that had fallen.  A flight of buzzing arrows followed their advance across the loway, some catching weakly in the leather of the human fighters, others biting only the empty blackness beyond.  But no arrow caught the elder Hubley.  Around her the air glimmered faintly with a bluish light.  She had cast a protection about herself.  Only magic could affect her now.  The younger Hubley knew the spell well.  It was her favorite defense. The elder Hubley shouted back over her shoulder.  “Down the shaft, all of you!   Canna, you first!” Another flight of arrows followed from the sissit bows, with the same result.  The younger Hubley had to duck her head below the top of the road as misfired arrows snaked into the darkness around her.  The elder replied with another blast from her staff.  The wounded sissit howled. Canna was hesitating at the mouth of the hole. “Go!”  the elder Hubley ordered.  “Sit on the edge and let yourself slide down.  The passage is steep, but it’s safe.” She turned her head to make certain they were following her instructions, and the sissit sent another skittering flight towards her.  All of them flitted past her shield like darting swallows. Canna dropped into the hole.  Then Avender took the diggers and dropped them in one after the other like two sacks of potatoes.  The sissit were beginning to close, packed behind the protecting shield of their leader.  For a moment Omarose waited as if to argue with Avender over who would go last, but one look at Avender and he dropped through he hole.  Then Avender unsheathed his sword and stepped forward to stand beside Hubley. “Go!” she cried fiercely.  “I can hold them long enough for you to be away!  You’ll only hinder me by staying!  I’ll follow as soon I can!” Another flight of arrows splattered off her magical protection and cascaded into the pit behind them.  Avender thought better of arguing with her.  He stepped back to the side of the small hole in the floor and, bringing the hilt of his upright sword silently to his lips, saluted her.  Then he sheathed the sword and stepped into the shaft.  But the older Hubley had turned back too soon to see him, for the sissit decided to rush her at that moment, sweeping forward in a hesitant wave behind the apex of their leader’s shield.  She let them come until they were almost upon her, then threw up her arms with a sudden wave.  A blinding flash blew out from inside her cape. Shrieking, the sissit raced back up the corridor, a few more added to the stricken bodies already on the ground.  All except the leader, who had been blown sideways as his heavy Dwarven shield repelled all but the force of the blow.  He fell to the inside of the corridor against the wall, and dropped his shield.  But, instead of immediately scrambling after his protection, he now appeared to be flailing away at himself, scrabbling among the loose stones of the corridor. The younger Hubley didn’t understand why her older self didn’t strike him with a quick conjurement.  Without the protection of his shield he was helpless. “Blast him!” she shouted, willing, now that the others were gone, to reveal herself.  If they killed the sissit leader the rest would surely run off into the darkness, cowards that they were. But the older Hubley appeared reluctant to seize the initiative.  She kept an eye on the crowd of sissit still lurking farther up the loway, while also watching the leader in the throes of his apparent seizure. “Why are you waiting?” the younger Hubley demanded.  Another blast of the fire spell was all that was needed. And if the older Hubley wouldn’t do it, then she would take care of it herself. She stood up above the ledge, her eyes on the sissit as she began the incantation.   Just three words, and the fixing of the target in her mind.  In the grip of its convulsions the sissit stood with its back to her, its hands contorted and straining as if holding something in their thick-knuckled grasp.  So much the better.  The creature could not have made a better target.  The older Hubley did nothing, her back still to the younger.  The younger spoke the words. At the same moment, as if guided by a deliberate malice, the elder stepped directly into the path of the spell.  There was a burst of fire and, where the sorceress had been, there now stood a column of white flame, burning around the shadow of a woman.  For an awful moment Hubley could see herself frozen in that terrible brightness, a grim statue encased by its cone of writhing fire, and then there was only the flame, the body within consumed by the magic blaze. Savage desperation swept over Hubley, numbing her heart and mind.  She was transfixed by the image of her elder self expiring in a pillar of flame.  How could she have done this?  How could it have happened?  It had almost been deliberate!  It was all wrong! Trembling in anger and terror she stepped backwards, away from the horror of what she had done.  But she had forgotten where she was and, as her foot slipped out over the nothing above the pit, she gave a final forlorn cry of terror and fell back into the dark deep of Vonn Kurr. 2 She had been standing at the top of her tower, wrapped in a warm cloak and looking to the south, where the sharp crags of the Valing Bew stretched the limits of the sky.   Only recently had she mastered the Timespell, and she was trying to decide which unhappy moment in history she would go back to first and fix.  A wind was whipping up the valley from the west, ruffling the lake and tossing her long dark hair across her face.  At the foot of the tower a hart froze at some sound Hubley could not hear, then bounded gracefully into the trees. A hand tapped her on the shoulder. She turned instantly and uttered a spell that should have blasted the intruder into dust.  Instead she found herself staring at a gray haired woman whose eyes twinkled at the exact same level as her own. “Really, Hubley.  You have to learn to be less rash.  It only gets you into trouble.” Hubley resisted the urge to try another spell.  “Who are you?  How did you get in here?” “The same way I always do.” “There are wards on every level of this tower.” The strange woman laughed lightly.  “Oh, I know this place far better than you do,” she said.  “Look at me, Hubley.  Don’t you recognize me?” There was something familiar about the woman.  The curve of her mouth, her light brown eyes.  Her face had the smoothness of whitened age, like a surf bled shore.   But Hubley couldn’t place her. “No.  I have no idea who you are.” “I’m you.” “Who?” “You.” “No you’re not.”  Hubley was indignant. “You’re right.”  The older woman nodded brightly. “It is confusing.  I’m not that you, I’m this you.  Oh dear.  I’d forgotten how complicated this moment was.  Think for a moment, Hubley.  You know the Timespell.” Hubley said nothing, still suspecting some sort of trick. “Of course you do.  I know you know, after all.  Well, I’m you, and I cast the Timespell to come back to talk to you because I need your help.  It’s time you began to play your part.” Now Hubley recognized the familiarity.  The woman did indeed look like her, an older Hubley with more lines around her mouth and quieter eyes.  Hubley wanted to believe her.  But she had to be sure. “Prove it.” The older woman rolled up the sleeve of her cloak, exposing her left forearm.  Hubley noticed the thimbles on her little fingers.  Despite the mottling of age, the other woman’ s arm looked just like her own. “Touch my wrist,” she said. Hubley knew what the older woman wanted.  Slowly she put out her own hand and took the offered arm between her fingers.  The slight swelling in the bone was there, and felt exactly as it felt on her own wrist.  The broken bone from childhood had healed well, but not perfectly.  Her own wrist throbbed at the memory as the older Hubley pulled down her sleeve. “You are me.” “I am.” “How old are you?” The older woman shook her head.  “That would be telling.”  For a moment Hubley thought she was speaking to an incarnation of her mother, not herself.  “It’s always better to know less rather than more in these matters.  Then you don’t have to remember so many details.” The older Hubley pulled her cloak more closely about her throat and turned toward the stair at the center of the tower.  “Come,” she said.  “We have a lot to talk about.  I put the kettle on as I came up through the pantry.  It’s beautiful up here, but it’s cold, too.  Let’s have some of that Wistlewood tea you keep in the back of the cabinet, and then we can discuss our arrangements.  And I have a new way of casting that Stairtripper spell you webbed outside the observatory I know you’ll appreciate.” Hubley found herself staring at the single gray braid hanging down her elder self’s back as she followed her downstairs.  Was that what she looked like from behind?   Self-consciously she reached back to feel her own hair, which was hanging loose upon her cloak.  Her own hair was not so long.  But she did braid it when she was working. In the pantry the elder went straight to the cabinet for the tea while the younger took the cups and saucers down from the cupboard.  While they busied themselves the cat came in, a tawny stretch of proud fur.  It looked once at each woman, licked a paw, then looked at them again.  Its second look was very confused.  Then it mewled at both and strutted away, tail stiff with disdain. “So,” said Hubley, when they had taken their kettle and cups to the library, “why is it you’ve come back to get me?” She watched as her older self took a sip from her tea, then drew back when she realized she was doing the exact same thing.  The similarity made her uncomfortable, so she put her cup aside. Her older self smiled in amusement.  “I need you to do something,” she said as she lowered her own cup.  “It’s important.” “What is it?” “I need you to follow a party of adventurers on their way to Issinlough.” “Issinlough.”  Everyone knew the name of Issinlough.  The first home of the Dwarves.   “They say that’s a very dangerous place.  You know I’ve never been.” “I have.” “Then why don’t you follow them yourself?” “I can’t.”  The younger Hubley recognized the way the older warmed her hands by rolling the cup gently between them.  “I’ll be the one leading the party.” “You’ll be leading the party?”  The younger Hubley leaned forward involuntarily in surprise. “Yes.” “Then what do you need me for?” “Because that’s what happens.” “What do you mean, ‘That’s what happens.’” “Just what I said.  You forget, I’ve already been there.” Hubley frowned.  “That’s hardly enough of a reason to persuade me to go running off with you.” “Believe me, when you’ve practiced the Timespell as long as I have, you’ll know that’s more than reason enough.”  She took another sip from her cup.  “But I do have another reason just for you.” Hubley decided enough time had passed to establish her own identity and reached for her own cup of tea.  She needed the touch of something familiar just then.  The elder smiled again.  The younger was beginning to be annoyed by the condescension in that smile.  She wasn’t a child. “And your other reason is...?” “To go to the future.  You’re going to come with me because this is your chance to break the natural boundaries of the Timespell and make your way to the future.  You know you won’t turn that opportunity down.” The entirety of the elder’s offer came to the younger in a rush.  What she said was true.  There was no way Hubley could turn down a chance to get to the future.  The Timespell only worked according to the memory of the caster, or someone with the caster, and that limitation meant that the caster could not go forward in time, only backward.  But, once she was in the future, she would be able to travel back and forth between that time and now.  And all the years in between. Her impatience disappeared.  Or rather, it assumed a different form as she made up her mind in a rush. “I’ll go,” she said. “Of course you will,”  said the elder. 3 She fell through the darkness of Vonn Kurr, the wind whipping around her in a rising roar.  The sudden shock of her descent brought her back from her blind terror.  She didn’t know how long she had before she hit bottom, but she would need at least ten seconds to cast even her emergency spell of return.  She had heard Vonn Kurr was deep; she hoped it would turn out to be deep enough.  The wind was now cracking past her so fast she could hardly breathe.  She raised her left hand before her and removed the small silver thimble that covered the shortened tip of the little finger.   Then she spoke a single word of power.  There was a jar as time snapped and... ...she was lying on her back in a chamber deep beneath her tower, back in her own time.  Her finger itched where the last joint had reattached.  It always took a day or two for flesh and bone to get reacquainted. For a long time she did nothing.  She lay with her eyes closed and tried to recover from the shock of having just killed herself.  It wasn’t that she blamed herself for what had happened.  She was too practical for that.  She hadn’t been trying to kill herself, after all.  If anything, she blamed her older self for putting her into such an impossible situation in the first place.  All the same, it was a long time before she had settled down enough to think rationally about what had happened.  The rock floor was smooth and cool against her back; the darkness covered her like a blanket. Eventually she drove the pillar of fire from her mind and began to think instead of what she could do to change what had happened.  What was going to happen.  What was the point of the Timespell if you couldn’t go back and undo whatever it was you didn’t want to occur?  All she had to do was return to the future a few hours early and make sure the sissit remained inside that side passage.  If they never found the party, then there would never be a fight at the edge of Vonn Kurr.  And if there was no fight, then the elder Hubley wouldn’t die. She wasn’t quite sure what she would do once she found the sissit, but she was sure she’d think of something. Just resolving to act made her feel better.  She went back up to her tower and began the conjuration that would allow her to return to the time she had just left.  With nothing of her in the future to act as a lodestone across the years and distance, the process would be more difficult, and take much longer, than her return.  But the traveling would be just as sure. She made the necessary preparations, then took herself back to the time when the company had last rested in a small chamber off the loway, just before they had woken and she had managed to get herself caught in front of them.  But this time she was going to go on ahead deliberately.  She knew the route they were taking now. Avender was on guard as she crept past the sleeping company, but she had made herself invisible again, and made no sound.  Out in the main passage she continued through the darkness, her fingertips brushing the inner wall, until she felt it was safe to show a light.  She would lose her invisibility by casting a light, but she needed to be able to see now that she was no longer simply following the others. She cast the spell and a dim flame gleamed in the crystal at the top of her staff.  Its pale light showed the loway winding down into the depths of the earth before her.   Above her head the low ceiling swallowed the darkness beyond the circle of yellow light.  The Sun Road, her older self had called it.  Hubley was no authority on the history of the Dwarves, but she knew about the Sun Road.  Uhle’s Path.  The loway from ancient Grangore down to even more ancient Issinlough.  The ruin of ancient Bryddin skill littered the passage; bits and pieces of the old sculpture and elegant mosaic that had once decorated these walls now lay in shattered pieces along the road.  Twisted brackets remained where once had shone the lamps of Uhle.  Dwarven hands had carved this road in their search for the eye of the Sun, but those hands had long since returned to the cold stone. She moved down the road, past the few branching tunnels that loomed darkly beyond the reach of her pale illumination.  Small, unnamed creatures slithered away at her approach, just out of sight in the stony dark. At last she came to the intersection where the frog’s face squatted above the tunnel mouth.  Holding her staff before her, she entered the corridor.  The walls of the passage closed stealthily around her.  At the back of the tunnel a flight of stairs went down steeply into the darkness.  A forbidding passage, like the gaping throat of a great stone serpent.  She held her staff downwards, her free hand balanced against the wall, and descended. She counted the steps.  One hundred, two hundred.  At four hundred and eighty-two the stair stopped.  The passage continued onward and forward into the gloom.  The air had become heavy and thick; water clung to the walls in beads that sparkled beneath her pallid light.  The mist she inhaled with every breath had a fetid oiliness, not quite the smell of a bog.  A bog, no matter how foul, possesses the stink of life, a natural fetor.  But this smell was metallic, of decayed and rusted iron, an odor that conjured an image of great metal corpses dissolving in ancient pools. The passage descended gently as she crept through small, but growing, puddles on the ground.  There were no turns or branchings in the corridor, no place to hide.  The dark water swallowed her weak light without reflection.  As she stepped around one of the larger pools she brushed against a thick mold that covered the stone walls around her.  The fungus parted wetly beneath her touch, sucking at her fingers.  Tendrils hung from the ceiling, coils of soggy vegetation thick as squirrels’ tails.  Fallen clumps festered in the pools on the floor.  She had to stoop as she pushed forward now, her cloaked arm held out to brush away the sodden growths.  She could no longer avoid the puddles, which bubbled ever so slightly as her boots stirred them, and deepened until no part of the passage floor was dry. Soon she was sloshing through a filthy stew that reached almost to her knees.  A thin gray mist, stirred by her passing, simmered around her waist before dissipating just below her chin. Suddenly the heavy vegetation lifted away from her head and she found herself on one side of what seemed to be a large cavern.  The water stretched in front of her to an uncertain distance; the walls vanished on either side.  Above, the ceiling was lost in blackness.  She doused her light with a gesture: she didn’t want to draw attention to herself right in front of the tunnel she wanted the sissit to avoid. She stepped back into the passage and removed her cloak, which was dragging in the water.  Her hand smelled where she had wetted it.  The smell was oily, with that same hint of tired iron that hung damply in her nose.  Then she heard voices from the cavern beyond and crept forward to hear them better. The voices came clearly across the water once she was standing at the end of the tunnel, the soft, wheedling tones of sissit.  How far away they were, she couldn’t tell.   There were echoes from the wet stone and the black water, and her ears had been so sharpened by the long hours of silence that she didn’t trust them.  The voices could be on the far shore, or they could be in a rowboat twenty feet away. There were two of them.  “I see it,” the first was saying fearfully.  “I see it.  Big light by fishway.” The second voice snorted.  “Of course you see it.  Everybody see it.” “You think that Glommer?” “I don’t know.  What you think?” “I think Glommer come.” The second voice took on a cunning tone.  Hubley pictured the two of them squatting in some ugly pool, the first somewhat cowed by the more commanding presence of the second. “Maybe you go look.  You see it, you go.” “I not go.  You go.” “You see it, you go,” repeated the second with a snort.  “Maybe you swim.” “I no swim.  No, no.  Glommer here.” “You do what Obahed say.  I eat you else.” “You don’t eat me.”  This was said without full confidence, as if the speaker were aware of some possibility of the threat actually occurring.  “Only Glommer eats.” “I eat too.  Glommer say, ‘Obahed, eat that one,’ or ‘Obahed, eat this one.’  I eat.   Glommer say that all the time.  I number one chief.  I eat what I want.” “You just fat seeti.  Glommer eat fat seeti.  You swim.” There came the thock of something hollow and hard being hit by something just as hard but not as hollow.  Which sissit had been hit, though, Hubley couldn’t tell.  A small splash echoed through the cavern like a stone dropped down a deep well.   Then the first voice spluttered out as it apparently flailed around in the water,  “I see you, Obahed.  You feed Glommer.  I bring Teekee back and then whole tribe eat you!” The splashing continued and Hubley strained forward out of the tunnel as she tried to hear more.  What was a Glommer?  Where were the rest of the sissit?  How had they all gotten across the water to the tunnel leading up to the loway?  The darkness felt tangible around her ears, and she had an urge to swat it away the way she would a swarm of gnats.  She took another step forward and the oily water leaked over the tops of her boots to squish icily between her toes. A heavy blow struck her across the head.  Her eyes flashed with sparks of pain, and she collapsed unconscious into the cold water. 4 She woke with a filthy rag around her mouth and her hands tied to a thick pipe on the wall behind her.  Light splashed across the assemblage of boilers and belts, pipes and pistons that filled the room before her, but all the machinery was silent.   Everything was ancient with decay. She coughed, and shook her head to clear her thoughts.  Gagged and bound, she could invoke no spells.  The sissit were either going to dine on her or they were going to be more creative.  With a sinking feeling, she realized that, once again, she had rushed headlong through time into another unfortunate position. She tugged at the ropes and the pipe.  Flakes of rust showered her face.  The ancient metal squeaked in a hopeful way, as if the strain was already too great.  She pulled at the pipe as quietly as she could and was actually starting to think she might get herself free when an old wizard in stained robes surprised her by gliding out from behind one of the machines. He was old.  Too old.  The skin of his face was stretched taut over bone, and his hands, which he held clasped in front of him, appeared to have no skin upon them at all.  No other part of him was visible.  Under a black skullcap he floated forward like a bank of poisonous fog.  Hubley had heard of such wizened wizards before, mages living dark, secret lives of great extent in fastnesses far removed from the ordinary walks of life.  There was always a high price to pay for such prolonged antiquity. As he came close she saw that each bony claw seemed forced into a permanent fist.   And inside each fist he clasped a small crystal globe. “Ahh, my dear.”  His voice was not unkind, but lacked the least trace of concern.  “It seems you have regained some use of your senses.” Below his black skullcap his eyes loomed even blacker, with no white or iris, two great unblinking pupils like the eyes of an enormous fly, but with only a single facet each.   His long, hooked nose divided their hard blackness with a thin, pointed ridge. “I was worried for a moment that my servant had struck you too forcefully and that you were not going to waken.  At least he neglected to take the odd bite or two out of you.” He smiled and brought his hands together.  As he did, Hubley was able to get a better look at the crystals, which were bound to each skeletal claw with loops of thinnest blumet wire.  The shiny coils wound up around the hands and wrists to disappear into the folds of his robe.  Deep within the heart of each globe flashed small streaks of blue lightning.  Hubley felt the power of his magic swell like a blister out from those strange spheres. “I hope you are comfortable,” he continued.  “Let me unloose that nasty gag.”  He raised his right hand and a shimmer of cold blue light flashed towards the cloth around her mouth.  She felt nothing until the rag untied itself with an eerie, flowing motion, and slithered away from her face.  Then the wizard crossed his hands before him, slipping each into the opposite sleeve, and nodded.  He seemed quite pleased with himself. With her mouth free Hubley was no longer defenseless.  Although her most powerful spells required the use of hands and staff, she could at least try something.  She spoke two quick words, intending a cloud of noxious smoke to form about the mage’s head, but he only laughed.  His voice was a high-pitched cackle, seasoned with more than a little madness. “Oh, my dear!”  he wheezed.  “That is wonderful!  Do you really think I would allow you to conjure in my own chambers?   Ha, ha, how delightful!  You might have struck me dead, and that would not have been to my liking.  No, no.  Not after all these years of time and effort.” He shook his head in silent laughter, and Hubley noticed he had no ears.  Just holes, like the nokken back home in Valing - where she wished she was. “There are incantations covering this place which prevent the working of any magic, except the magic of my own, clever hands.  And of course, my hands are another matter entirely.” He brought his hands back out into the open and held them up for his own admiration.  He looked like nothing so much as a courtesan studying a set of freshly painted nails, turning his bony claws this way and that.  The crystal spheres gleamed darkly. His dead eyes returned to Hubley.  “I see so few fellow humans down here to whom I can show off my talents.  These miserable sissit are worse than children.  Do you know, that in all the centuries I have been down here, I don’t believe that I have caught even a dozen actual humans?   Just a few adventurers hunting for the lost treasures of Issinlough.” He smiled evilly, his open mouth revealing toothless black gums. “Not that I ever let them get there.  And none of them have been magicians.  Do you realize how much easier all this would have been if I could have found even one magician?   Do you?   But, no.  No magicians.  Just these miserable sissit, which provide all the sustenance of a worm.  Until now.” He leaned forward and beamed in anticipation, his black eyes devouring her like a pair of sepulchral mouths. It was the worst trick of magic, to feed off the lives of the living.  Hubley knew exactly what to expect from this spectral ghoul.  He had not lived long enough in solitude and separation from the rest of humanity to leave behind his desire for eternity, supplementing his own soul by siphoning the spirits of others.  But there was nothing she could do to defend herself.  Without her magic, tied down to the rusted machinery, and with an unknown number of sissit wandering the tunnels of this place, she stood no chance.  A cold quiet settled over her as she realized that she had accidentally discovered the easiest way to change the future.  She would get herself killed now, instead of later.  She didn’t want to even begin to think about what else would change when all the various older Hubley’s melted away from the years behind her. The mage, however, seemed in no hurry.  With an odd politeness, he asked what year it was.  “On the surface, that is.  I don’t think that time exists in the same manner down here.  Lack of references, you know.” Hubley asked herself why on earth the mage would want to know that.  At the same time it occurred to her that she had no idea what year it was.  She had been brought here by her older self, who had made it quite clear she would be better off not knowing the details.  So she made up a year five hundred years later than her own, if only to keep him talking.  The longer he talked, she guessed, the longer she would stay alive. “And who rules in Malmoret?” he continued. “Um, Sylvan the fourth.”  That, too she invented. “And are the Black Humbolds still the dominants?” “Oh, no.  The Ochre Mages pushed them out a long time ago.”  She wondered how long she would have to keep up this fairy tale. He asked his next question with greater cunning, as if he were just now coming round to his real intent.  “And have the Dwarves returned?” “Returned?   How can the Dwarves return?   They all died a long time ago.” “One can always hope.”  A certain greedy wistfulness played across the wizard’s mouth.  “The Bryddin left this place long before I came.  But that does not mean they cannot be living somewhere else.  One or two, perhaps.  They were always very hard to kill.  And there have always been some signs in the lore.  If I could find a Dwarf...” He left the thought unfinished, preferring the delicious taste of imagination to the sourness of reality, and turned back to Hubley.  “But another mage is almost as good.  I have never been able to find a Living Stone, but this procedure has worked quite nicely.  It was used quite frequently by the divinators of my day, but was never generally approved of by the uninitiated.  My sissit were looking to obtain something fresh with which I could replenish myself when you disturbed them.  But they found you instead, which is much, much better.  I can get far more time from you than I can from some poor sissit.  I have added my own genius to the ancient procedures, you know.  That’s why I came down here.” He held up his hands once more.  “These are Dwarven crystals, of course,” he said.   “They make the process easier and adapt it to all living things.  I could even use the fish out of the lake, though the gain to me would be too small to be of use.” The wizard’s rambling was interrupted as a large sissit padded in through a low entrance on the other side of the room.  The wizard turned and spoke sharply before the sissit could say a word.  “Obahed!  I told you not to disturb me until I am finished!   You know my wishes.” The sissit bowed as best it could and spoke, trembling.  “Obahed knows.  But Eebul go see what Teeka doing.  Maybe whole tribe coming now to kill Obahed.” “I’ll take care of Teeka and the rest when I am done.  Now go away.  They cannot hurt you here.” “Obahed hungry.” “Obahed eats when I am done.  Now go!” The sissit ducked quickly back out of the room, its great feet slapping hollowly on the metal floor.  The wizard turned back to Hubley.  “I would like to continue our chat,” he said,  “but time appears to be running low.  And I wish to take care of you first.” He turned to a table in the middle of the room.  His back was to the door as he began to arrange several wicked looking knives and metal tubes upon a table.  He was completely absorbed in his work and did not notice when a new visitor came in through the door behind him, tiptoeing stealthily.  Not even when she smashed his head with an axe. “Hi, sis.  I’m back.” Hubley found herself staring at another Hubley Mims.  Only this one looked to be much closer to her in age.  The new Hubley gave a nervous grin, then bent down over the body of the wizard. “I’m not sure he’s dead, yet,” she said, “if he ever was alive.  But this is what I did the last time I was here.  When I was you, that is.  It seemed to work.” The axe flashed again quickly; once, twice, and the wizard’s hands bounced off and across the room, still wired to the crystals.  The wrists were no more than brittle bone, and the two strokes had required no strength at all.  A final cut at the pipe above her head and the imprisoned Hubley was free. “Come on, we’ve still got that Obahed to get past.”  The more recent arrival pulled her up by the arm before she had a chance to say a word.  “We’ve got to close this circle we’re both running around in.”  She handed the rescued Hubley the axe, pulled a knife from her belt, and led the way out of the chamber. They went out through the door that Obahed had entered and found themselves in a narrow tunnel.  Everything was made of the same rusted metal.  Pipes twisted across the walls and ceiling like vines in a forest.  Only the floor was clear, except for occasional puddles where water dripped from the ceiling.  They hurried down the corridor past several side tunnels before the slightly older Hubley came to a stop and held her younger self back with a cautionary hand.  The younger Hubley peered around the older’s back and found herself at the entrance to a small room.  Obahed was seated at a rough wooden table against the far wall, not five feet away.  Her staff leaned against the wall beside him.  The sissit sat with its back to the women, one elbow resting on the table, its chin in hand.  Its other hand held a long knife with which it hacked small chips off the side of the table.  Its fat feet slapped sloppily up and down in a pool of water on the floor.  Five or six spells to kill the creature came immediately to the younger Hubley’s mind.  Then she remembered that her magic would not work within these walls. The older Hubley took one deep breath to steel herself, then tiptoed up behind the pale sissit and stabbed it in the back of the neck, just above the tunic. The wizard had not bled, but the sissit did.  Its blood was everywhere.  It gave a great cry and grabbed at the knife with both hands.  The older Hubley stumbled back away from the creature’s grip and came to a stop with her back propped to the wall beside her younger self.  The sissit twisted as it tried to get the dagger from its neck, knocked over the bench it had been sitting on, and collapsed on the floor.  Twice it tried to sit up, splashing around in the bloody puddle.  Then its head fell sharply back against the metal floor with a loud, echoing clang, and died. A moment passed.  The younger Hubley swallowed once, then turned and threw up into the slimy puddles at her feet.  All the tension of her capture swam from her stomach up into her arms and throat and head until she slumped down onto the floor to keep from passing out.  She took several long, deep gulps of air.  For a few minutes the older Hubley left her alone.  But, when she had recovered, the elder told her to get the knife the sissit had been playing with before it had died. “And look closely at the place where I stabbed it,” she added.  “Memorize the exact spot.  That’s the only way you’ll be sure to kill it on the first try.  Which, as you know already, you will.” Reluctantly the younger Hubley took the bloody corpse in her hands.  She had to roll it over to retrieve the knife, which had fallen beneath its body.  She studied the second knife in the creature’s neck for a moment, before dumbly realizing that the two knives were exactly the same.  Then she fell back wearily onto the floor beside her elder self.  She was wet and miserable and covered with rust and muck. “Have you recovered?” the elder asked sympathetically.  The younger nodded.   “Okay then.  It’s time to get out of here.  You’re going to have to watch everything I do very closely, because the only reason I know how to do all this is because I saw myself doing it when I was you.  Got that?” The younger Hubley nodded numbly.  She was beginning to understand what her older self had told her, back at the beginning of this increasingly unpleasant adventure, about wanting to know as little about the future as possible.  All this foreknowledge only seemed to be causing trouble.  Here she was, following herself in what was starting to look like an endless circle, all in an effort to change the future.   And, for the life of her, she couldn’t seem to get ahead of what was happening.  The circles just kept drawing closer and closer, like a whirlpool spiraling down a drain. Wearily she took her staff from its place by the wall.  The older Hubley pointed to a rusty iron wheel fixed to a trap door in the ceiling.  Although it looked impossible to turn because of the rust, it actually spun quite easily at the elder’s touch, once she had climbed up onto the table to reach it.  The trap door fell heavily open and a spatter of rusty water rained down around them.  A second wheel was attached to the inside of the open door that now hung down from the ceiling above.  Behind the table was a flimsy ladder, but it reached up into the door in the ceiling and in a moment both Hubleys had climbed into the tiny room above. The small chamber they found themselves in was unlit and almost filled by the two of them standing close together.  The light shining up from below cast their faces in ghastly shadow.  Above them, almost touching their heads, was a third wheel similar to the one they had opened.  The younger Hubley reached for it at once, eager to get out of this constricting place.  A word from the elder stopped her. “Don’t.  You’ll bring the whole lake down on our heads if you do.  We have to close the bottom door first, then pull that lever on the left.”  She pointed to two levers on the wall beside them.  “You pull the right one when you come back.  Don’t forget that.” She closed the bottom door and pulled the lever in the darkness.  For a moment, nothing happened.  Then there came a sound of gears clanking and metal grinding and the younger Hubley’s legs jerked as the room around her suddenly moved.  She held onto the wall beside her for balance and felt the chamber shuddering with a soft vibration.  They seemed to be moving upwards.  Not very fast, but enough to feel the movement.  She had read about such things in books that described the Dwarves.   Lifts, the Dwarves had called them.  They used water and large wheels to move small rooms up and down their caverns.  But she had never imagined she would actually be in one. With a sudden jar the contraption came to a stop.  The younger Hubley felt the older move past her to unscrew the wheel above their heads.  She heard the door swing open, and a gust of somewhat fresher air swept into the room along with a splash of rusty water.  “Give me a boost,” said the older Hubley out of the darkness.  The younger helped the older climb out, then was helped up through the door herself.   She had no idea where they were, although she did smell water.  A cool breeze fingered her cheek. “Where are we?” she whispered. “In the middle of the lake.” “The lake?” “The one at the end of the tunnel.  You were standing in it when the sissit grabbed you.” That lake.  Hubley had almost forgotten.  She was very confused.  After the light of the magician’s lair, dim though it was, the plunge back into the darkness of the cavern was disorienting.  She wanted to flash a light from the top of her staff that would open up the darkness to the highest point in the ceiling above.  But her elder self was already tugging at her sleeve.  “Hurry.  You have to go back again.  I don’t know what happens next, but there are more sissit coming.  I’ll take care of them.  And don’t forget that knife!”  She hissed the final reminder insistently. Then Hubley removed the silver cap from her little finger once again.  The wound at the last knuckle was barely a day old and throbbed in the thick air of the cave.  The breeze was gusting stronger now, and her cape flapped loudly in the wind.  She spoke the word of power again and once more her soul snapped back through time... 5 ...and she was lying for a second time in the chamber beneath her tower, her eyes focused on the rune of carved ivory set into the stone ceiling.  A rune of recovery and return. She went upstairs right away.  This time she wasn’t going to rush off without thinking.   This time she would be more patient.  She was a chronothurge, after all; she was supposed to be in control of time.  The knife at her belt belied that thought, perhaps, but right now she preferred not to go too deeply into the how and why of where it had come from. In a chair in her study she curled up with the cat and a mug of hot tea.  The problem, she decided, was that she didn’t know enough.  About the sissit who had attacked her.  About what might lie on the far side of the cavern beyond the lake.  She needed to go back, scout around, and find out where the sissiti had come from.  The wizard she already knew she would take care of.  All she had to do with him was let matters run their course.  But the sissit were another question.  She needed to find them.   Only then could she burn them out of every tunnel in Vonn Kurr, if she had to, to make sure they never found their way to the Sun Road. This time she would keep events under control. When she was ready, and after she had gotten some much needed rest, she summoned a memory even earlier than the last one and retraced her route once more through the tunnels of Vonn Kurr to the shore of the wizard’s lake.  There she discovered a shallow ledge that led through the water on the left to a rocky beach on the far side, where two small coracles were drawn up on the shingle.  She considered smashing the bottoms of both, until she remembered she would need a way to get out into the middle of the lake and the entrance to the wizard’s lair.  So she left them alone. Beyond the coracles she discovered a pair of tunnels at the top of the slope.  The passages were roughly hewn, not Dwarven work at all.  They twisted and split among each other like a clutch of snakes, with branching tunnels going left and right and up and down.  She spent hours exploring them, but without some way to mark her path she kept going round and round in circles.  What she needed was to capture a sissit and make it show her the way.  Otherwise she was only going to get herself lost. She retraced her steps.  As she emerged back into the cavern she heard sounds coming from the lake.  One of the coracles was being quietly paddled.  If she could catch the paddler she would have her guide.  But the soft splashes faded away and she was left silently cursing her lost opportunity on the wrong side of the cave. She waited a few minutes to see if the paddler would return.  The darkness was absolute.  She had risked a small light while exploring the passages, but had ended that spell before she had returned to the lake.  There was no sense in showing a light now; she would only scare off her quarry.  She was deciding to sneak back around the side of the cavern and try to grab it there, when the sound of flat feet flopping carelessly against the stone floor came from the second passage.  She recognized the voices in the darkness immediately. “So.  Where is boat?” “Boat is here.” “We catch fish?” “We catch big fish.” Two sissit, with who knew how many others on the far side of the cave, was more risk than Hubley wanted to take in capturing a guide.  No doubt if she acted now she would just start up some new chain events that would end with her having to save herself one more time.  No, she had promised herself she would be patient this time.   Better to just keep on watching.  There would be other chances. The sissit dragged the second coracle across the shingle and into the water.  The boat creaked as they climbed aboard. “Ssh!” one of the sissit warned.  “No noises.  We on Glommer’s waters now.” “Glommer not worry about us.  I tell you, I know when Glommer sleeping.  I one smart sissit.” “I worry.” The confident sissit did not seem to care about that.  “You got hooks?” it asked. “I got hooks.” Several minutes passed with no talking.  Hubley guessed they were baiting their hooks, or doing whatever it might be that sissit did to catch fish.  There were a pair of gentle plops as they lowered their lines into the water. Time passed.  Sissit appeared to be no more inclined to talk while fishing than humans.  At least an hour dragged by and they caught nothing.  Hubley began to fidget impatiently, and was starting to cast about for some new course of action when a moment of light burst into the cavern.  In the darkness, the yellow flash seemed as brilliant as an explosion.  A large part of the cavern was illuminated briefly from the entrance at the far side, exposing the dark water, a hint of stony walls, and the two sissit crouching in their small coracle.  Then the light was extinguished as quickly as it had appeared. Hubley was completely taken by surprise.  She hadn’t thought her other self would arrive so soon.  Now everything was going to get complicated again. “I see it.”  The less confident sissit’s voice was sullen, as if it did not expect to be believed.  “I see it.  Big light by fishway.” The second voice snorted.  “Of course you see it. Everybody see it.” “You think that Glommer?” “I don’t know.  What you think?” “I think Glommer come.” The second voice took on a cunning tone. “Maybe you go look.  You see it, you go.” “I not go.  You go.” “You see it, you go,” repeated the second with a snort.  “Maybe you swim.” “I no swim.  No, no.  Glommer here.” “You do what Obahed say.  I eat you else.” “You don’t eat me.  Only Glommer eats.” “I eat too.  Glommer say, ‘Obahed, eat that one,’ or ‘Obahed, eat this one.’  I eat.   Glommer say that all the time.  I number one chief.  I eat what I want.” “You just fat seeti.  Glommer eat fat seeti.  You swim.”  The speaker’s false bravado was cut short by a dull crack, followed by the sound of a short struggle and a loud splash. The first voice cried out again as it thrashed around in the water.  “I see you, Obahed.  You feed Glommer.  I bring Teekee back and then whole tribe eat you!  You see!” She heard the sissit swim noisily through the water, followed by its fellow in the boat.   Then the swimmer’s wet feet squished quickly across the beach and receded down the other passageway.  Or so Hubley thought from the sounds she heard in the darkness.  She thought about following it, until the pursuing sissit grounded its coracle against the rocky shore and she stepped back into the shadows of the tunnel.  She didn’t want to find herself caught between the two of them.  She would just have to keep waiting. A second splashing came from the far side of the lake.  That would be her own capture.  At the sound the second sissit stopped its pursuit and called back loudly across the water.  “Ho, Eebul!” it called.  “What you catch?” “Man, I think,” came a new voice, echoing strongly off the cave wall.  “You have sissiti?” “No.  He fall in water after I hit him.  He run to Teekee.  But we make fine catch today if you catch man.  Glommer be very happy.”  Hubley heard the sissit climb back into its boat and begin paddling toward the far shore. “Maybe we eat this one,” suggested the far voice. “No!  No!”  Obahed called back quickly.  His splashes echoed through the cavern.   “Glommer not like that at all.” “Glommer not know,” suggested Eebul. “Glommer know everything,” Obahed insisted.  “We make Glommer happy, we stay happy.  Glommer not eat us.  But Glommer know about human.  Glommer know everything.” The new voice grunted at this wisdom, apparently convinced.  The splashing resumed.  Hubley guessed they were loading her other self into the boat, to take her to the wizard. She listened as the creatures paddled back into the lake.  She judged they were near the middle when the paddling stopped and a low, grinding sound began that she felt more than heard.  The sound stopped and the sissit pulled something heavy out of the coracle.  She guessed the entrance to the wizard’s lair had just surfaced, and that the sissit were now loading her unconscious body into the small metal room. The grinding resumed.  When it was gone the cavern was silent again.  Hubley waited in the tunnel mouth, her heart beating.  Events had been taken out of her hands yet again.  Somewhere down there, at the bottom of the rusty lake, she was being trussed to the pipes in the wizard’s chamber.  Obviously now was the time she was supposed to rescue herself; no other Hubleys seemed to be showing up.  Finding the sissit would have to wait.  Again.  She curled her fingers anxiously around the handle of the axe at her belt.  She wondered if she was supposed to swim out to the mechanical island.  But, no: she hadn’t been wet when she had come to her own rescue.  She would have to just keep waiting. Half an hour passed.  Then the grinding started up again, followed by the sound of a single grumbling sissit clambering back into one of the boats. “‘Go, Eebul,” Obahed say.  ‘Go get other sissit.’”  The sound of its low muttering floated clearly across the lake.  “Always going for Eebul.  Never eating.” Hubley came quietly down to the beach as the sissit paddled itself ashore.  She heard the bottom of the boat grind against the rock, then the creature’s feet slapping against water and stone as it hopped out.  With a word she caused her staff to flare forth in a burst of light.  The sissit turned towards her with a cry and held up its hand against the glare.  She stepped behind it and knocked it unconscious with a single blow from the back of her axe. In its boat she paddled out onto the lake.  The water felt oily in her hands.  She had left her staff still shining in the bow and the light showed the other coracle tethered to a low island in the midst of the water.  She tied her boat beside the first, then opened the trap door on the floor of the lift and climbed inside. An odor of rust and mildew assailed her.  She spun the wheel of the trap door closed above her head and sneezed.  Two levers stuck out from the wall beside her.  Pull the lever on the right when you come back, that’s what she had told herself before.  She pulled the lever on the right. The low, clanking sound began beyond the room again, as if wheels were turning against one another somewhere in the lake outside.  She could feel the vibrations through the floor.  Then her knees buckled and the entire room began to move downwards.  She held out a hand to steady herself.  In less than a minute the clanking ceased and the small room had stopped moving. She stooped to listen at the door by her feet.  She could hear nothing.  Carefully she turned the wheel of the lower door.  There was a rusty creak, then the mechanism spun freely and she let the door drop open into the room below. She expected no one, and she was right.  Had she been caught by surprise before, she doubted she would have been able to sneak up on the wizard the way she had.   She dropped down into the room, her boot heels clanging against the iron floor.   Carefully she hefted her axe and waited for someone to come challenge her.  But water dripping into pools from the ceiling was the only sound she heard.  Still holding the axe at the ready, she closed the hatch above her head and advanced cautiously down the hall that led to the wizard’s chamber.  Everything in this strange cave was just as she had remembered it; the dank, metallic smell, the reddish water puddled everywhere.  Another corridor ran off to the right, turning almost immediately and disappearing. She came to a quick stop at the sound of footsteps approaching from the tunnel in front of her.  She darted into the side passage and around the turn, her heart in her throat.  The footsteps came padding softly forward, bare feet slapping on the metal floor.  She held her axe tight against her chest.  Then the sound was past, fading down the corridor towards the room she had just left.  With a sigh of relief she started forward cautiously again. Another several steps brought her to the wizard’s laboratory.  Glommer was standing with his back to her, arranging the grisly tools on his workbench.  Beyond him Hubley saw herself chained to the pipes on the wall.  A moment of anger rushed through her and she charged forward, banging the axe down sharply on the sorcerer’s head.  He sprawled forward across the floor, his skull crushed.  There wasn’t a drop of blood.   She felt a sharp thrill of relief, as if a weight were being lifted from her shoulders.  She was reenacting the past!  And, for the first time, it was working!  She grinned over to her earlier self.  “Hi, sis!”  she called, almost gaily.  “I’m back!” The younger Hubley looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and relief.  Some of the recent horror lingered in her expression as well.  The older took the axe in both hands and bent over the wizard’s body. “I’m not sure he’s dead, yet.  If he ever was alive.  But this is what I did the last time I was here.  When I was you, that is.  It seemed to work then.” As she had seen herself do before, she flashed the axe up twice and cut each hand off at the bony wrist.  Then she stood and cut herself free from the iron pipes. “Come on,” she urged.  “We still have Obahed to get past.  We have to close this little loop we’re both running around in.” She hushed her younger self as she was about to ask a question and handed her the axe.  Then she drew the knife from her belt and started back down the passageway.   They went quietly, the older Hubley in front with her blade ready, the younger Hubley following.  They found the sissit sitting at the table, just as it had been before, chopping at the wood with its long knife.  The very knife Hubley held in her hand.  She took one deep breath to steel herself, then tiptoed up behind the creature and stabbed it quickly in the back of the neck in the exact spot she had seen the knife pierce once before. The creature gave a great cry and grabbed at the blade with both hands.  Blood spouted from the wound and she stumbled back away from the wretched thing until her back was against the wall.  The sissit thrashed desperately about on the slimy floor, adding its thick red blood to the puddled mess, then toppled over and died.   And the younger Hubley threw up on the floor beside her. She gave her younger self a minute to pull herself together.  She had already been through that bout of nausea and was much less moved.  She had never killed anyone by hand before, but she had experienced the moment once already, and the shock and disgust of the moment had lessened.  So she left her younger self in peace, until she knew she had caught her breath and recovered some composure.  Then she told the younger Hubley to take the knife the sissit had been playing with. “And look closely at the place where I stabbed it,” she added.  “Memorize the exact spot.  That’s the only way you’ll be sure to kill it on the first try.  Which, as you know already, you will.” Loops within loops.  Now she had taught herself how to kill sissit without actually knowing how.  She watched as her younger self warily recovered the sissit’s blade. “Are you recovered now?”  Her younger self nodded tiredly.  “Okay then, it’s time to get out of here.  You’re going to have to watch everything I do very closely, because the only reason I know how to do all this is because I saw myself doing it when I was you.  Got that?” The younger Hubley nodded again.  She still looked a little green around the edges.   The older led her back through the trap door in the ceiling, showed her how to operate the lift, then took her up and helped her out onto the island in the middle of the lake.  A faint breeze had come up and was brushing across her cheek.  After the deep metallic rot of that cave, the lake itself smelled almost as fresh as the hills of Valing, especially on the back of the breeze. “Where are we?” the younger Hubley whispered. “On an island in the lake.” “What lake?” “The one at the end of the tunnel.  You were standing in it when the sissit grabbed you.”  She tugged impatiently at her younger self’s sleeve.  “Hurry.  You have to cast the spell,” she whispered.  “I don’t know what happens next, but there are more sissit coming.  I’ll take care of them.  And don’t forget that knife!”  She hissed the final reminder insistently. A spot of movement in the darkness struck her eye.  A small light had appeared high up in the darkness to her right.  She guessed that the sissit who had run off was returning.  Another light appeared, then a third, and now there was enough light to cast a glow around the far wall of the cavern and for Hubley to see that the sissit were approaching the lake from the left hand tunnel.  She reached out to touch her younger self, but she was already gone, back into the past.  She turned eagerly to the approaching sissit.  Her chance to stop them had finally arrived. She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face and noticed the soft breeze had picked up to a steady wind.  Across the cavern the line of lights twisted down to the dark mirror of the lake like spots on an uncoiling snake.  The sissit came silently; unblinking eyes gathered noiselessly by the side of the dark water.  When they had come close enough that their lights revealed Hubley standing on the island, they began to jabber excitedly among themselves until one that Hubley recognized because of the shield he carried stepped forward and called to her across the water. “Obahed!  We see you!  Tulum come back, tell sissiti everything!  We know you try to kill him!  We not afraid of Glommer any more.  We kill you and Glommer!” Hubley wondered if she could use Glommer to her advantage now that he was dead.   The sissit were acting brave now, but one whiff of superior power and they would turn tail immediately, scampering back to their smelly holes in the darkness.  All she had to do was scare them off and everything would be solved. An arrow whistled out of the darkness and passed close beside her.  She raised her arms so that her cape spread out ominously around her and spoke the word that lit her staff.  “Foolish sissit,” she called, trying to think of what a wizard like Glommer might say to scare them off.  “I am not Obahed.  Obahed is dead.  He failed me.  But do not be so rash as to think that you can challenge ME!” She raised her staff and pointed it threateningly at them.  Another word, and a bolt of fire flashed over their heads to splash in a shower of sparks on the cavern wall.  The strengthening wind whipped the last flickering coals away to her right.  Half the sissits’ torches vanished as their owners decided that a magician was more than they had bargained for and melted back into the darkness. But the leader was not yet cowed.  “Puny fireman!”  he called brazenly.  “Sissiti knows that magic!”  And he launched a fireball of his own.  Disdainfully Hubley caught his feeble casting at the end of her staff and tossed it into the water at his feet.  A puff of steam hissed up from the lake, and a few more sissit disappeared.  Their leader took a few steps backward and shook his staff. With a roar of noise a greater burst of wind grabbed Hubley’s cape and nearly lifted her off her feet.  Most of the sissit torches were blown out by the sudden gale, but the light from Hubley’s staff was enough to show her what was happening.  Little waves had begun to dance madly across the black surface of the lake, chopping back and forth, both with the wind and against it.  They broke the dark water into a churning boil of shaking shadows.  Another blast of wind shook Hubley and she had to draw her arms back in to wrap her cloak around herself or she would have been blown off into the water.  Her island began to shake violently with the waves. A strange current started to swirl in the lake.  She could feel the metal island shudder and thrum in time with the dancing waves.  On shore the sissit were either cowering on the ground or were crawling up the hill to escape the surging water.  The wind rushed even higher. Hubley threw herself down as well and scrabbled to open the trap door.  There would be no more cowing of sissit now.  A roaring that was half wind and half the shaking water drowned out all other sounds.  In the light of her staff, Hubley saw the quaking waves began to stretch and join together, circling into a huge eddy that occupied most of the hundred feet between the island and the shore.  Then, with a great sucking sound and a new ferocity to the wind, the center of the waters ripped open and a whirlpool funnel formed.  The lake rushed round and round the vortex with a roaring that echoed and boomed.  The sissit lay with their hands pressed over their eyes and ears, while Hubley clung to the ring on the trap door and tried not to get sucked into the boiling waters.  The island was shuddering violently now, the rusty old metal pulling and twisting in the rush around it.  The entire lake had turned into a crashing maelstrom.  Waves swept up against the side of the island, drenching her.  A sudden, twisting wrench knocked the island forward and she would have been pitched headfirst into the whirlpool had she not been gripping onto the wheel on top of the trapdoor.  As it was she was left splayed across the surface of the tilted island while she tried desperately not to slide off.  The water sprayed up and around her as waves crashed and boomed. Finally she wrestled the hatch open and threw herself into the metal chamber.  She clamped the door shut behind her, spun the wheel tight, and collapsed on the rumbling floor.  She lay there panting, feeling the strain of the chains that anchored her to the bottom as they were rattled by the power of the whirling water.  Then they broke and the whole chamber hurtled forward, pounding her flat against the floor as if a huge hand was squashing her chest, and the island began to spin and twist and jump madly about as it was caught in the grip of the current.  Hubley was thrown back and forth and up and down.  Every inch of her body was banged and bruised and battered as she rolled about inside the Dwarves’ machine like a die in a cup.  She curled up in a ball, covered her head with her arms and tucked her face against her knees, trying to take all the bruises on her legs and back.  Then the fury slowed.  She felt her little chamber get caught in the final swirling of the funnel itself, spinning round and round in the whirlpool.  A sudden lurch, her head banging against one of the iron wheels on the doors, and she passed into jarring unconsciousness.  Again. 6 When she woke, Hubley decided the pounding must have stopped soon after she passed out or she never would have survived.  Her whole body ached; she was tired of being knocked unconscious.  Her head was bloody and her ears rang.  At least her arms and legs seemed to work.  The roaring of the whirlpool and the waves was gone, but she thought she could still hear the sound of running water.  Or maybe that was just her ears still ringing.  After a moment’s groping in the dark to find her staff, she set a small glow burning coldly in the crystal. She tried to open one of the trap doors.  It wouldn’t budge.  Judging from the dents in the walls, the iron island seemed to have been banged about as badly as she.  Using her staff as a lever, she tried the wheel again.  For a moment nothing happened; then, with a sudden grinding of tired metal, it spun free.  She let the door fall open and peered outside. Before her, many torches gleamed across a muddy plain.  Small pools of water glinted here and there in hollows; rocks and boulders lay scattered about.  Sissit scrabbled in the mud, grabbing something from the slime and stuffing it into their filthy shirts.   Fish.  There was no sign of the lake. Where was she?  Had the whirlpool carried her off to some new cave?  Then she recognized the hill above the muddy plain.  It was twice as tall as it had been before, but it was the same hill where she had found the coracles.  The beach was now halfway up the slope, where the dry rock turned to mud, forty feet above her head.   The lake itself was entirely gone.  She had no idea what had happened, but she guessed that, by killing the wizard, she had also released the magic that had held the lake in check. The sound of water at her feet made her look down.  The metal island hung above a large, deep hole.  To her left a small stream dropped into the darkness in a thin plume of dirty water.  Pure luck had caught her at the edge as the lake had drained, instead of sending her spiraling down into the darkness.  A massive Dwarven chain, each link as thick as her arm, dangled down into the hole, all that remained of the anchors. She ducked back inside before the sissit saw her and thought for a moment about what to do next.  There was no way out through that door.  She would have to try the other. The second wheel swung open more easily than the first.  She found herself staring at a wall of rusted metal just beyond her reach.  Carefully she poked her head out and looked around, but the metal wall curved to block her view.  The island appeared to have wedged itself against the structure, whatever it was.  That explained why she hadn’t been sucked down the massive drain.  She guessed immediately she was looking at the wizard’s lair, revealed on the lake bottom now that the lake was dry.   The metallic smell was the same. She pulled her head back inside and cast a quick spell.   "Shadow lost, Shadow found, Shadow bend the light around." Her body groaning just as painfully now that she was invisible as it had before, she climbed out the trap door and up the metal wall. It was an easy climb.  The metal surface was mottled with lumpy bulges that made for excellent hand and foot holds.  From the top she could see that the whole structure was actually a statue of a giant frog, crouching on its belly with the drain caught between its two front paws.  The eyes that bulged from the top of its head were made of thick glass, but so covered in ancient grime as to be completely opaque.  Why the Dwarves had built a giant metal frog at the bottom of a lake was something no one would probably ever know. From the frog’s back she could see the lake bed sloping upwards forty or fifty feet to the tunnel that led back to the loway.  The mud between lacked pools and fish, which meant the sissit were only scrabbling in the slime behind her.  She had a free path all the way to the exit. She half-climbed, half-slid down the back of the metal frog to the ground and began slogging her way through the slippery ooze up the hill.  The thick muck stuck to her boots, and she had to keep her eyes on her feet as she trudged along.  Had anyone been close, they would certainly have heard the loud squelching each time she pulled her feet out of the slime and took another step forward.  But no one was and, by the time she reached the edge of the lake bed, she was well away from the hungry sissit.   A high curb marked the edge of the old lake, and she had to climb over it to reach the tunnel to the loway. She was getting back to her feet when a large sissit barreled out of the tunnel mouth and banged straight into her, knocking her back into the mud below.  She rose, covered in slime.  Beneath the mud she was still invisible, but the layer of lake bottom she now wore outlined her as clearly as if she had been wearing brown paint.  The sissit that had knocked her over spotted her at once.  With a great cry it brandished its axe over its head and jumped from the ledge to finish her off.  But its feet slipped out from under it as it landed and, being much larger and heavier than Hubley, went rolling down the slope beyond her. She scrambled back over the curb as quickly as she could.  The big sissit flopped futilely, its curses attracting the attention of every other sissit in the cave. “There!” “By tunnel!” “Is Glommer!” “Yes, Glommer!” “Kill it!” A shower of poorly aimed arrows clattered around her as she ducked into the tunnel.   She ran up the dark passageway as fast as she could, splashing through the rank water, waving away the grabbing growths.  By the time she reached the stairs she could plainly hear the sissit behind her.  Banged up as she was she wasn’t sure she could outrun them.  She wasn’t sure she was thinking too well either.  But there was no time to rest.  She stumbled over the first step in the darkness because of her slippery boots, then was climbing the steep steps on all fours as quickly as she could. She had been climbing for some time when arrows started clanging around her once more.  The sissit were gaining, their torchlight showing the steps closest to her.  With a desperate burst of speed she scrambled out of range of their weak bows.  Below her the creatures bellowed angrily. Her heart pounded and her legs ached.  Her panting grew so loud she could no longer hear the slapping of the sissiti feet behind her.  She barely had the strength in her thighs for each step.  Then she stumbled badly, falling hard on the sharp stairs, and almost dropped her staff.  The sissit behind her whooped and shook their torches. “Glommer, we get you!”  they taunted.  “You not get away now!” The thought of capture sent a final surge of strength through her burning legs.  In a moment she was over the last stair, with only the gentle slope of the passage before her.  Behind her the sissit gave a maddened cry and fired another volley of their black arrows.  But she was too far ahead of them now.  Another fifty paces and she would be out in the main tunnel. She dashed forward, and crashed head first into something stretched solidly across the tunnel.  She lay stunned for a moment on the cold stone floor, the cries of the sissit seeming suddenly very far away.  Then, in a daze of memory, she realized she had run headlong into the barrier she had cast herself.  She was leading them out onto the Sun Road!  The timing was exact!  In a sudden terrible insight, she saw that, far from changing anything, she had been the cause of everything!  Had she only left the matter alone, none of this would ever have happened. But there was no time for thought.  She staggered up and reached for her staff.  With a word she dismissed the spell before her.  There was a loud crack as her casting was broken, then she staggered on down the tunnel.  Only a little farther to go.  The loway loomed just ahead, the glow from the oldest Hubley’s staff plain beyond the tunnel’s end.  An arrow whizzed past her ear, and then another.  The sissit were almost upon her.  Only five more steps remained.  An arrow struck her in the back, sticking to her abruptly like a great pin.  Two more struck her, their poison already going to work, and she tumbled forward onto the cold stone floor of the passage.   How can I die now? she thought.  The Hubley who had sent her off on this wild goose chase was much, much older.  Where were the years in between?  Had she changed everything after all?  Then the pain stopped, the poison grabbed her heart, and the cold stone floor of the loway closed into darkness around her. 7 She woke again, once more back in her own bed in her own tower.  Her entire body ached, but there was some relief in giving herself up to warm sheets and the aroma of fresh brewed tea.  An older Hubley was sitting in the chair by the window, waiting for her. She remembered why she was there. “Don’t try to get up,” her older self cautioned.  “You still don’t have all the poison out of your system.  You need to rest for at least another few days.” The younger Hubley fell back onto the pillow; the older came over to tuck her back in under the quilt.  Slowly the wave of nausea that had swept over her when she tried to rise passed away, replaced by dull anger.  It was all so frustrating.  Every time she had gone back to Vonn Kurr she had only made things worse.  She hated not being in control.  There had to be something she could do. “There isn’t,” said the other.  “You’re beginning to understand that now, aren’t you?” Hubley was growing tired of having someone around who always knew what she was thinking, but was too weak at the moment to do anything about it. The older Hubley, however, wanted to make certain the younger had learned her lesson.  “Do you think you’ve caused enough trouble yet?” she asked.  “So far you’ve managed to almost get yourself killed twice.  And that’s after you already did kill yourself the first time.” “It doesn’t seem right.” “You’ll get used to it.” “There’s nothing we can do?” “Nothing.  The Timespell is only good for learning about the past.  Don’t ever think you can change it.  No matter how many times you loop through some moment, your own experience is always going to be in a straight line.  You can’t get ahead of yourself, no matter how hard you try.  You’ll just be a dog chasing its tail if you do.   And as for the future...” The older Hubley pursed her lips; a painful shadow passed through her eyes.   Apparently there just weren’t enough years available to soften the blow. “Just remember that you can’t ever forget what you’d rather not know.” Beyond the window, finches chattered in the sunshine.  The younger Hubley, considerably older now after everything she had been through, decided she no longer wanted to be lectured to, and asked for her cup of tea. She gave herself up to the care of the older for the next few days.  Life was easier that way.  Lying in bed, she had more than enough time to try and sort everything out in her mind.  There were still moments when she quivered in frustration, when the memory of killing herself came unbidden and she was forced to live with the thought that she could do nothing about it, that some parts of life were outside even a wizard’s hands.  She saw now that she had been guilty of the most basic error of magic.  She had almost thought herself beyond any control other than the limits of her own will.  In her own way she had almost made Glommer’s mistake.  But she had been lucky.   Various versions of herself had been there to pick her up each time she stumbled. At least now she knew she would live to a ripe old age.  Now there would be times when she could be fearless, armed with the knowledge of her place of dying.  But she would be careful, too.  Having challenged fate once and lost irrevocably, she would be unlikely to do so again. Still, there was one thing she didn’t completely understand... The day came when her wounds were healed and the poison fully leached from her blood.  The older Hubley came to her on an evening when she had gone to the roof to watch the sun set behind the mountains.  The younger was thinking about how pleasant it was to have the older there to nurse and comfort her, how much it was like having her own mother back again.  Silently she wondered if she would ever see her again. “You know I won’t answer that,” said the older Hubley, anticipating her as usual. “You know I wasn’t going to ask,” she replied. “Yes.  And I know what you are going to ask, too.” “About going back?” “Yes.” The younger Hubley pulled her cloak more closely about her shoulders.  The nighttime chill was rushing into Valing faster than the sun was leaving. “Then you know you could answer my suspicions just as easily right here,” she said. “I could.  But it’s better if you see for yourself.” “I’m right, aren’t I?” The older Hubley shrugged and said nothing. The younger persisted.  “It wouldn’t be something special about that sissit, would it?” she asked, looking for an answer other than the one she had imagined.  “Was that the reason I stepped in front of my own spell?” “Either way, we have to go back and see.” The younger nodded.  She had the feeling this was what she was supposed to do.   The older held up a small bottle, no larger than her thumb, filled with a dark red liquid. “I’ve already prepared the spell.”  She handed the bottle over to her younger self.  “It will bring you back here whenever you want.  You’re not strong enough yet to do it yourself.” Then the elder spoke a word and the top of their tower was gone, replaced by darkness.  She spoke a second word and a pale light shone out from her staff.   Before them lay the looming pit of Vonn Kurr, behind them the gently curving wall of the Sun Road. “They’ll be here any moment,” said the elder.  “And I still have to make us both invisible.” She spoke the third spell softly and doused her light.  Then she pulled the younger Hubley back against the smooth stone beside her. A dull boom echoed up the passage to their left almost immediately.  In the still darkness the younger Hubley could feel the pressure of the sound against her ears.   Shouts followed the explosion faintly, but soon the cries and crashes of battle began to grow louder.  A glimmer of light appeared up the loway; the last Hubley and the diggers came running in full flight around the turn to stop, panting, at the edge of the road. A skittering of stones at the far side of the tunnel signaled the arrival of the youngest Hubley.  There were four of them now on the loway, three of whom were invisible.   One of the diggers turned to stare at the spot where the youngest Hubley now stood. “What was that?” he whispered. “Just a lizard,” said the only visible Hubley.  The digger did not look convinced.  But the arrival of the last three members of the party distracted him.  Everyone was breathing hard. “They’ll be on us in a minute.”  Avender kicked a pebble out into the empty gulf.  “We convinced them to pause a bit back there, but we didn’t stop them.” “There’s a ledge about three feet down.”  Omarose was peering over the edge of the road.  “We can hold them off from there as long as our arrows and your magic hold out.” “We won’t need that.” The eldest Hubley had begun to sweep the dust and loose stones from a spot in the middle of the road with her boot.  “There.  I’ve found it.  You don’t think I led you into a trap, do you?  Here, Omarose, give me a hand with this.  I’m not as strong as a Dwarf, but you might be.” She uncovered the iron ring in the stone floor.  Omarose slung his bow across his shoulder and took the ring in his hands.  He strained mightily, but the trap door didn’t budge. “Keep trying.  That door is old.  Avender, Canna.  Welcome to Vonn Kurr, the last Deep before the Abyss.  Now, then.  Look to your bows.” The sissit came howling down the tunnel.  She turned to face them and raised her staff.  An awful grimness shone in her eyes.  The sissit stopped short at her ferocity, still fearful of her power.  For a moment the two groups stood watching one another tensely, except for Omarose, who kept straining on the ring. The scene played itself out.  The company fled one by one down the chute while Hubley kept the sissit at bay.  Several arrows came close to the two Hubleys hiding invisibly by the wall, misfires from the sissit’s bows, but the eldest Hubley made sure that none of her magical attacks came near them.  Of course she knew they were there.  She was the last Hubley of all, and had the benefit of this moment from at least three other moments in time.  The sissit fell beneath her power; the cavern began to fill with the stench of their burns.  Then Avender saluted her and stepped into the shaft way, and only the four Hubleys remained at the edge of the pit.  The creatures rushed the one they saw, howling their rage at the escape of the rest of their prey, forgetting their fear of magic until Hubley splashed them with fire once again and they went tumbling backwards. Their leader rolled away from the blast toward the inner wall of the loway, its Dwarven shield falling away from its hand.  Even though she saw it coming, Hubley still lost her balance and fell on top of the creature when it tumbled against her legs.  It couldn’t see her of course; but, thinking itself attacked by some strange new magic, the sissit grabbed her violently all the same.  They wrestled in the dust, Hubley trying to escape from the creature, the sissit clinging to her desperately, fighting for its life against this new and unseen apparition.  Its hard, knobby hands closed around her throat.  She fought to push it away, her head twisted to one side, and found herself looking at her older self, the one who was about to die.  That Hubley stood slightly to one side, her staff raised.  The younger Hubley could see plainly that her older self was ready to blast the sissit to a cinder if she could only find a clear shot; willing, even in that moment, to take a chance with history and save herself if the opportunity arose.  But the chance, as they both knew, never came. Then the older Hubley’s eyes focused directly on the younger.  A weary smile graced her mouth.  And in her eyes the younger Hubley saw sad tenderness, and a message of forgiveness sent to reassure her.  There was no time for anything more.  No chance for the elder to say all the things she wanted to say before she took one step to her right and caught the flash of flame the youngest Hubley fired, killing herself.   But saving herself also. The shock and heat from the blast caused the sissit to loosen its grip on Hubley’s throat.  She kicked herself free and rolled panting to the edge of the cliff.  For the second time she watched her final death in a plume of fire and tried not to imagine the pain. When it was over all the sissit stood still for a moment, their enemy defeated in a way they didn’t understand.  They had no idea where that ball of flame had come from.   The leader scrabbled across the dusty floor for its shield.  Once that protection was back in its hands it stood, shook the shield over its head, and let out a howl of victory.  That was the signal for the rest to break their silence and cheer as well.   Their whoops and bellows crashed through the loway and out into the great, dark deep. They were stopped, though, when a loud voice shouted, “ENOUGH!”  Another Hubley appeared magically in the middle of the circle of ash where she had died a moment before.  Even the younger Hubley was fooled, until she realized this was the third Hubley, the one who had been hiding beside her against the wall.  But the sissit possessed no such understanding.  As far as they were concerned, this was the same mage, apparently risen from the dead.  A hush fell across their pale faces as she appeared. “BEGONE!” she cried, and launched her fire once more into the ranks of the poor creatures.  They turned and ran, even the leader.  He dropped his shield and fled madly back up the tunnel into the darkness.  As the last of their bare feet slapped away into silence the elder Hubley turned back to the younger with a weary sigh. “You know it all, now.  It’s time to go home.” “And you?  What are you going to do?” The elder stooped to retrieve the sissit’s shield.  “I have to go on with the others.   There’s no reason for them to know I’ve died.  They’ll never know what happened.” “You should get some rest first.” “I should,” the elder agreed, “but it’s better if I don’t.  They’ll be expecting me to be exhausted after the strain of the battle.” She sat down on the rock beside the open shaft and began to lower herself down.   Then she looked back up at her younger self one last time. “You have many, many years,” she said, “before you get to this point.  You’ll know what to do when the time comes.  There is still much for you to learn.  Break the vial I gave you and step into the mist that forms.  That will take you home.” Without another word, she let go of the sides of the chute.  With the shield strapped to her back, she disappeared down the shaft.  The younger Hubley heard a thin whoosh as the older vanished; then all was silence and darkness in the cavern again.  A sudden loneliness came over her.  It seemed that all the mystery of her life was now in this future.  All her secrets.  All her answers.  All her time.  But, as she had said, she had many years yet to get here, and many things yet to do in the past. So she went home. (Click here to return to the home page.)