Shaun and Matthew jumped hurriedly out of the cubicle before it could take them back to Fort Battleaxe, and then sighed in relief at having gotten away from the terrible priest with their skins intact. “Phew!” breathed Shaun as he looked around to see where the others had gone. “Thank the Gods he’s on our side.”

     “Yeah,” agreed Matthew. “I wonder what he’s like when he’s angry.”

     “I don’t want to even think about it.” He spotted the others about thirty feet away, staring around at the other teleportation cubicles, each leading to a far distant part of the world. They were at the bottom of a large, bowl shaped depression with stairs in the slope leading up to ground level.

     The soldiers walked over to rejoin the others, and the six of them stood around uncertainly, not knowing what to do next. “I suppose we go up there and try to find someone,” suggested Thomas. “We can’t stand around here all day.”

     “I thought there’d be someone here to meet us,” said Diana.

     “So did I, but there isn’t. We’re definitely expected though, aren’t we? I mean, he said they’d changed the rules so we could come through more quickly, so they definitely knew we were coming.”

     “Hey, there’s someone coming now,” said Jerry, who’d been looking in another direction.

     They all turned and saw a young, athletic looking man trotting down the stairs behind them. He was wearing casual clothing. A short sleeved shirt, walking boots and a wide brimmed hat to shade his eyes from the yellow sun. He carried no weapons, but was so fit and muscular that he didn't look as though he needed them. He looked as though he could wipe the floor with all six of them without raising a sweat if he wanted to.

     They felt no fear of him, though. On the contrary, there was something immensely reassuring about his presence, and as he drew nearer the six questers felt completely safe and protected, felt all their fears and worries melting away. Thomas felt himself liking the newcomer even as he drew near, and it puzzled him. How can I have such a strong feeling for someone I’ve never met before? he wondered. For all I know, he might be a mad axe murderer. It’s very strange. The feeling was much too strong to deny, though, and the wizard knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was a good man. More than that, this was the finest human being it had ever been his privilege to meet.

     “Hi,” he said when he reached them. “Sorry I wasn’t here to meet you but things have been a bit hectic lately and I got held up. Welcome to Pargonn.”

     Lirenna blushed and did a little curtsy. Diana put her palms together and bowed her head, and all the men bowed respectfully, none of them really knowing why they were doing so except for an unconscious feeling that this man deserved honour and respect. "Thank you for helping us this way, Sir," said Diana, looking a little ashamed as if she thought her words were clumsy and inadequate. "I'm sorry, but I don't know the proper way to address you..."

      “Oh please, it's not necessary,” said the man, however, clearly embarrassed, as if he were treated this way all the time and was fed up with it. “Not while you’re on Pargonn, anyway. We try to leave all that formal stuff on the mainland. It can be useful, of course, in obtaining the co-operation of the authorities and so on, but here, we are the authorities. By the way, my name’s Gelrad.”

     “My name’s Shaun Winterwell, and this is my brother Matthew,” answered Shaun. “We’re privates in the Beltharan army, stationed in Fort Battleaxe, but currently on special assignment. This is our sister, Diana, a cleric of Caroli, and these are our friends Thomas Gown, Geremy Blumintop and Lirenna Daliris. All wizards graduated from Lexandria University.”

     “Pleased to meet all of you,” said Gelrad, shaking hands with each of the men in turn and kissing the hands of the women, which made Lirenna giggle like a schoolgirl. “I already knew who you were, though. Captain Resalintas told me all about you.”

     “He did?” said Shaun looking suddenly scared.

     The man laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “He had nothing bad to say about any of you, which means you must be quite exceptional people. No criticism from him is high praise. Look, do you mind if we walk as we talk, since we’re a bit pressed for time at the moment. This is a bad time to visit us, I’m afraid.”

     He led the way up the stairs to ground level and through the encircling defences; past guard troopers who scowled at them as they opened the doors to let them through. Gelrad then led them towards the city. As they went Diana noticed a gold chain around his neck, tucked down inside his shirt except at the back where it peeked above the collar, and she noticed it was making a slight bulge in the front of his shirt.

     “Excuse me,” she asked curiously, “but are you a priest?”

     “In a manner of speaking,” replied Gelrad, and he pulled out the medallion to show her.

     She gasped when she saw the regal looking golden griffin wearing a crown. “You’re a paladin! Of course, we should have known.”

     “A paladin!” exclaimed Shaun in surprise, and the two soldiers came over to look at the medallion before Gelrad tucked it back in his shirt. “You worship Samnos, the God of War?”

     “The God of the Fight against Evil,” corrected the paladin. “Yes, I have that honour.”

     Shaun and Matthew stared at each other, and Thomas guessed what they were thinking because he was thinking the same thing. This man was of the same faith as Resalintas, and yet the differences between them were staggering. Resalintas was one of the most terrifying people they’d ever met, whose steel grey eyes were as cold and hard as diamonds and whose slightest reprimand had all the force of a flogging. He had never been known to smile and his craggy, seamed face seemed totally incapable of any such expression. The network of scars that patterned his face seemed to hold it immovably in a perpetual scowl so that only radical surgery would allow his lips to curl upwards at the ends.

     Gelrad, on the other hand, never seemed to stop smiling and his friendly eyes glowed with laughter and compassion. It seemed impossible that both men worshipped the same God, and yet there were similarities. Both men carried an aura of holiness, power and invincibility which would give any soldier fighting alongside them the confidence and optimism to carry on against even impossible odds, and both men could, they sensed, inspire such fanatical loyalty that a man would follow them anywhere, even to certain death. These were the hallmarks of Samnos, the Warrior God, and the questers gradually came to realise that their differences in personality merely served to cover the rock hard core of duty and responsibility that lay beneath both of them. Strip away their surface personalities and Resalintas and Gelrad would be almost identical underneath, the only difference being the Paladin’s purer compassion and greater consideration for innocent civilians. Thomas wondered whether they’d ever met, and what would happen if they did.

     As they reached the town, the six questers saw that it was bustling with activity, with people running frantically all over the place. Barricades were being erected across the main streets, makeshift guardposts and fall back positions were being built and doors and windows were being shuttered and boarded up. It had clearly once been immaculately beautiful, but now the streets were strewn with loose bits of paper and off cuts of wood since everyone was too busy to pick them up, and many of the beautiful gardens and flower beds had been trampled by workmen too preoccupied to worry about them.

     “What’s going on?” asked Thomas in bafflement.

     “We’re expecting the Shadowhosts to launch an armada against us at any time,” replied the paladin. “We’ve got to be ready for them if everything we’ve achieved here isn’t to be swept away.”

     “Oh no!” exclaimed Lirenna in horror. Despite the hectic activity all around them and the damage that had been caused, they could still see what the city had been like, and still was for the most part. Her experience with human cities wasn’t good, but this one was different, so different that it might almost have been built by the shae folk, or at least with their help. She looked dismayed to think that it might soon be torn apart by war.