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shining moment when all will be revealed!”
    Tom closed his eyes and tried to remember. His world was relatively small, and there were few people in it. He would have remembered if he had met Magnus before. The strangers he saw in town at the weekly market were rare, and Magnus had never been among them. He certainly had never been to the Eliot farm before. No, they could never have met. “Sorry, I don’t remember.”
    Magnus dropped his arms. “So be it.” A shadow passed over the old man’s face; he nodded once, then turned away in silence. He walked more slowly now, as if his long years of living had suddenly caught up with him, and there was something about his stride that seemed familiar.
    Fire. A memory of fire surged up from the depths of Tom’s memory. Ten years ago, maybe more, a neighbor’s farm had burned in an unusual explosion, and the family that lived there had died. Tom had been very young then, and he didn’t remember having much contact with those neighbors. A bright flash had lit up the sky one night while he was watching the moon, scaring Tom enough to wake his mother, then all of them had raced across the fields to where the roaring flames lit the countryside. When they arrived, fire and black smoke poured out of a crater where the underground home used to be, creating a wall of intense heat. Luna kept Tom and Zeke from going any farther down the slope, but Tom’s father continued running, yelling and waving his arms. Silhouetted by the flames, his black coat starting to smoke from the heat, Ukiah bent over something on the ground, then helped a man stand up. Supported by Ukiah, the man stumbled slowly up the slope, glancing over his shoulder at the inferno behind them. When they got closer, Tom saw the dark burns on the man’s body. When his defeated gaze met Tom’s wide-eyed stare, tears began to stream down the man’s face, and he sagged to his knees in the dirt. Luna quickly covered Tom’s eyes with her hand, but Tom had already felt the pain in those gray eyes.
    Tom was surprised by the detailed memory. With the passage of time, he had come to think of it as an old dream. After the fire, his parents had never spoken of it again, and the man with the burns had disappeared into the night.
    “The fire,” Tom whispered. “You were the man in the fire.”
    Magnus stopped, but he didn’t turn around. When he spoke, his voice was almost inaudible. “That man no longer exists.”
    “Was that the night you learned the secret of your life?” Tom asked.
    “The first of many,” Magnus replied. He cast a sideways glance at Tom. “And now, whether you’re ready or not, your time has come, young Tom. Your time has come.”
     
    HIS narrow face was human in shape, with a graceful nose set off by prominent high cheekbones, but his chrome complexion made his emotions hard to read, mirroring the faces of the humans who dared speak to him. His eyes reflected without revealing, giving him the otherworldly presence expected of the ambassador of Telemachus. Dressed in black robes woven with the fine silver threads that enhanced and expanded his sensory field beyond his facial perimeter, he descended the ramp into the vortex chamber, hesitating as the concentric rings of color began to radiate from the center of the dark chamber. Telemachus was present, and he would not be fooled by the calm expression on the mirrored face of Hermes. Fortunately, his master had not summoned him to a meeting in Stronghold, and that meant that he had a good chance of leaving the vortex chamber alive.
    “It was a simple task,” Telemachus rumbled in his multi-voice. “Explain your failure.”
    The rippling circles of color passed through Hermes as if he weren’t there, expanding at a slow and steady pace through the blackness. As each color pulse struck his cloak, his sensory field registered tiny shocks to his nervous system, triggering rapid surges of random emotion in his brain. His normally placid demeanor now