The fishing went well. They didn't exactly land the mother load, but they did manage to catch six or seven medium sized fish between them, which would make a nice meal, or several nice meals if they gave some to the butcher. Umber didn't really have a fishing trade, even with being so close to a river, it wasn't big enough to have one. By the time they were heading back the sun was nearly set, and was well bellow the horizen by the time they got back. Ethern's mother wasn't too happy about this, but because she still wasn't talking to her son she couldn't say anything to him without letting her high standards slip, so she settled for glaring on a global scale. She had allready cooked a small roast of pork for supper, so the fish was stored away for another day. The three of them ate in silence, not having much to talk about, which was a first. Then Ethern's parents went and 'opened up shop' as it were, for the night trade of workers.

Ethern was left to his own devices, which weren't very many at the moment, so instead he went to bed. The raucuss from down bellow soon picked up, untill it was at the level he was used to. Ethern took out his deck to look through the cards that Death had fought against. Or, more precisely, 'A sourceror in the Forging' the card that was supposedly most like him. "3890. 3890. 3890 out of 4000. I can't believe it!" He muttered to himself. A vague thought occured to him. He tried to search his memory for something....He could remeber the design of every card the stranger had played, but he hadn't noticed the attack of the dragon, which had haunted his mind for the last half a year. He scrunched up his mind and focused. "Come on memories, don't fail me...now." He was back there, re living each second as it happened, though the overall colour was tinted green.

The stranger had just gotten him to cut the deck. He turned over the first card. It was the dragon. Ethern held the memory frozen in his mind, scanning over the scene. "2247." He read, noticing the attack of the dragon. "If I could read then I could see what it's name would be..." A second idea hit him. He didn't have to know what it was called to copy down what it was, and later he could get Robyn to translate it. He opened his eyes, and gave a start. The memory was overlapping with reality, or at least that's how it looked, as one image was ontop of the other. Hoping the trick wouldn't fade, he grabbed up his sketch pad and stub of pencil and carefully copied the strange letters and words down. At the edge of his hearing be began to hear the tiny wisper of voices, but they weren't human, and too quiet to distinguish, yet. Ethern closed his eyes again, and then let his memory contine. The next card turned over was a monkey. "1753." He noted the attack, and then, like before copied what he hoped was it's name.

He repeated the proceedure with the remaining cards. Then he looked down at the attacks he had recorded. The stranger had been very reluctant to go into any details, especially abut the future, but he had called one of his travelling companions over to look at the cards. The second guy rolled his eyes into his head for a second, and then looked at Ethern, a look of shock on his face. What was it they had seen? "....7 and 3 is ten. 40 and 50 is ninety, add on the ten in 100. 700 plus 200 is nine hundred, and the 100 hundred makes it 1000. Add that to 1000 and 2000 gives...4000! oh, bugger!" The next two pairs were the same, as were the last pair after that. Ethern shuffled his own deck thoroughly. "I don't believe in magic, I don't believe in magic." He muttered to himself, afraid of what could happen. He cut the deck and then flipped over the first two cards. 1235 and 2765. After some quick maths he swore. Next two 1820 and 2180. Again he swore. Last pair. 1963 and 2037. Was this the mark of someone with magical power? Maybe he could try cheating it. He shuffled the deck again. He closed his eyes.

There couldn't possibly be a monster with as low attack as 110. Normal humans had 500. A sourceror in the Forging was now on top of his deck, or would be once he cut it. Filled with hope he turned it over, and then the card that followed it. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself screaming in despair. A tiny white butterfly was on the front of his next card. It's attack was 110, exactly as it shud have been. He gathered up all of his cards and threw them into the draw in his bedside table, not wanting to look at them anymore. He slumped back on his bed. The tiny echoing voices had grown louder, but still not loud enough to be a cause of loss of sleep. Perhaps it was just the stress getting to him. Maybe the tiny voices were just his mind telling him to calm down. He scrunched up his eyes. "Go away!" he told, and was glad when they drowned into nothingness. With that sleep swept over him.

He dreampt of a starnge place, filled with bizzare monsters, much bigger than humans, who themselves appeared to be absent. The land was different aswell. It seemed to be a lot more zig zaggy, and unconformital, as if nature was at full power here. Some of the monsters looked like dragons, except wthout the wings, and non of them seemed to breath fire, or any other element, come to think of it. Ethern, or whatever he actually was in this dream, looked up and saw a large shooting star hurtling down towards him. Not him. Just the ground gereally, but it must have been huge. He closed his eyes. That didn't stop the boom, or the seering heat that insued. He awoke with a start. It was only midnight. The voices of whatever had tried to bug him earlier where back, only loader this time, as if there were more of them. "Go away!" he ordered, but this time the voices only faltered for a second. "Go awAY!" He felt himself getting louder and boomier. There was a lurch in the level of noice, dropping it severely. His eyes burned as he filled with rage. "GO AWAY!!" Deadly silence instantly followed.

He was sweating profusely. His eyes stopped burning. Tiredness approached him once again. He slumped back onto his pillow. He oppened his dream eyes once more. He was back in his room, standing besides the now sleeping version of himself. That thought was stomach renching for some reason, and he had to look away. There seemed to be a lot of small holes into darkness, and another place scattered around his field of vision. A glowing eye or two seemed to be hiding in one or two of them. The creatures that these belonged to seemed unwilling to come out though, as if he was something to be afraid of. He moved toward one. The eyes that had been in it stopped glowing, as if their owner had shut them.

"TALK TO ME!!" He ordered, though not exactly sure why.

One of the holes infront of him became larger and a fat...rat came out. Only it carried a small staff, or something. "We meant you no harm, young sir." It stuttered slightly, as if afraid.

"Why were you watching me?" Ethern asked.

"Were are...keepers...of the Way, we...look in on your world to spot up and coming wizards, or in your case sourcerors...then we report them to an official, who comes to the place where the wizard, or sourceror, is and takes them away." The rat explained.

"I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE!!!" Ethern yelled, suddenly getting very angry and afraid. The rat began shaking with fear.

"If you orders it, we will have no choice but to obey." It uttered quickly.

"Why is that?"

"You are powerful. Most of the up and coming wizards, or sourcerors, can barely contyrol their power, and don't even hear or even see us. But you are strong. You have already learnt how to seperate your mind from your body, and sent it places. Most of the others just do things locally...it is clear to us that you are beyond them, beyond some of the strogest wizards of this time even." Ethern smiled faintly at this.

"I order you not to tell anyone where, or who I am!"

"You have to use magic to make it stick..." The rats eye's bulged, as if it had revealed some secret.

"Fine. I ORDER YOU NOT TO TELL ANYONE WHERE, OR WHO I AM!!" This time he felt the crackly of power in his voice as it shot from him across the small space to the rats staff, where a strange second wave of magic eminated, touching all of the holes. Ethern began to feel faint, as if he had over exerted himself. He walked back over to his body, trying not to look at it, as he got back in. Ethern opened his real eyes. "Oh, Dog!" So he was a sourceror. His mind was tired. "No more out of body experiences, I just want a normal nights sleep!" He slunk back down. Then he added "And STOP YOUR TALKING!" Just before he was gone again. He was standing in a slightly familiar cicle when his dream started. A council of 12 blind men, in purple robes once again surrounded him. They wewre chanting again, but this time a few of them looked injured, and broken. A wal of violet rushed up around him. He felt like it was sapping his strength.

He crumbled to his knees. "Not again!" This dream was becoming a reoccuring nightmare. "STOP IT!!" He tried, one or two's power seemed to fail them, but the rest continued with the spell. "BEGONE!!" Send on of them hurling, but they were sapping him too much. "HELp." He magic was fading, and his mind was sinking into darkness. His life flashed before his eyes. Who ever these 12 blind men were, they would pay for this. No one sapped the strength of A Sourceror...especially not The Sourceror in The Forging! "IRON!!" He yelled, though it could easily have been a figment of his imagination at that point. The hazyness seemed to waver. He regathered his thoughts. Iron was good. You couldn't magic it, not unless it was within you, a part of you, making you as strong as it was. Ethern opened his eyes. Thin strands of the metal were running up the wall the blind council had errected around him. They still had a lot of his power, but non of them had his resistence to Iron.

"POWER RETURN!!!" He ordered. The remaining members all lurched as he yanked back what was by right his anyway. The more he drew back, the more Iron there seemed to be, making him stronger to pull back more. The wall began to fade, and was then gone, with a satisfying snap. "HOME!" He ordered. His own poer surged up and around him. This was indeed fun. He rematerialised in his room. Then he was violently sick. Ethern curled up in a ball on his floor. "What's happening?" He asked. The fat rat was infornt of him in a jiffy.

"You left again, possibly summoned, to a place where there are no holes in the universe, where evil is so dense that it blocks them up. We thought you were a gonner for sure!"

"How do I stop it happening?" He asked, still felling weak, as if this was some kind of pay back for using his power.

"The magics of man are beyond us."

"TELL ME!" He was sick again.

"I cannot tell you what I do not know!" The fat rat responded. Ethern groaned. That hadn't been the answer he had wanted to hear.

"Can you find out?" He asked, not wanting to use any more of his power, and be sick.

"I will send one right away, it won't be easy though."

"Why am I feeling sick?"

"I am guessing that you pulled back your own magic?" Ethern nodded. "Well, that would have been tainted, even ever so slightly, by Them, and to an inocent being, evil is the most vile taste of them all. But the more you taste it, the better it will taste, untill there comes a point when it can even be enjoyable."

"How long does the taste last?"

"Untill the taintedness is used up." Ethern groaned again.

"WATER!" He ordered, bringing up yet more bile, the taste was fading slowly. He gulped down the water, trying to wash it all away.

"You do know that you're drinking magic water, in a dream, right?" The fat rat asked, looking at him a little concerned.

"So?"

"Nothing. If you don't have a problem with it, then I won't make one."

"MORE!" He ordered. There was nothing left in his stomach to bring up, but that didn't seem to stop it trying. Again he wolfed down the water. A thought then occured to him.

"Why didn't I bring up any of the water?"

The rat licked it's lips, thinking over what to tell him. "Well, its complicated. You see, whilst uyou magicked up the water, it was sort of...part of you, your mind or soul, or whatever you humans call it, therefor, even under normal circumstances, once it is re-absorbed in, it just returns from whence it came."

"But?"

"But, these aren't normal circumstances. For one thing, you're in a dream, yet out of your body, out of phase with your world, so that you can see the entrances to ours....so...it might be possible that....that part of you is returning...to you, or your body at least, there by allowing you to temporarily exist in two places. This is not good. Your mind, your subconscious can't deal with this so..."

"One part of me gets" "snapped back to the other." He finished as it happened, with the paret that had been on the floor yanked back to the body, and his body yanked from the bed towards where his other bit had been lying on the floor. The result was him finding himself on the floor by his bed, face down. "Ow!" He bellowed as a sharp stabbiung pain sunk over him. The fat rat waddled over.

"Or, both parts of you try and be with the other, and you end up making a compromise."

"Why can I still see and hear you?"

"No idea. I was out of my depths about half an hour ago. Ah here comes my little reseracher, well what did you find boy? come on spit it out!"

"Iron, 'ead. If 'e 'angs some above 'is bed it'll keep them nasty nastys away."

"You here that? Simple really, especially for you." The rat acknowledged towards Ethern.

"IRON!" He ordered. Nothing happened.

"It's all well and good doing that in the dream world, human, but here you need the right word!"

"Which is?"

"What did I tell you? I was out of my depth half an hour ago! I don't know any more human magic words than your know Rat magic words!"

"Whats the rat magic word for Iron then?"

"Kelledrassie."

"KELLEDRASSIE!"

"Now you listen to me! Humans can't do our magic any more than we can do...You had to prove me wrong didn't you? Do you know how a big an idiot you made me look by doing that?" The rat asked, turning its back, and marching back through it's own hole in the universe. Ethern looked down at the lump of Iron he had created. Strangely enough there was no attempt be his body to even try and vomit. He put that down to the type of magic and what it had created, rather than anything to do with the taintedness being gone. He got up and back onto his bed.

He awoke much later. The sun was beaming brightly down upon his bed. The lump of Iron was still in his hand, proving it wasn't all a dream. Under the sunlight he couldn't see the holes any more, or even hear the rats busy little chatter. That suited him fine. He descended the steps after getting dressed and putting the Iron in his draw. His deck still lay scattered about it. He needed to get back to work, and start doing something. He looked out the window to make sure that it hadn't snowed over night, and then he grabbed the remains of the loaf from supper last night, and tore it to shreds with his teeth as he walked over to the blacksmiths. It must have been about nine o'clock by then. He walked around to the side door and entered. Stan was standing by the furnace, which was cold still. He was hunched over, a piece of parchment in his hands.

"Damn." He uttered a few times in a row. Closely followed by a "He's got to be kidding!"

Ethern carefully grabbed up the pack of matches from the draw they were hidden in. He walked over and set about trying to light the fire, to start the days work.

"Leave it Eth. We won't be needing it today." Stan uttered without even looking up. Stan took the small half moon glasses of his eyes. They were a little sooty and old. "We got a problem. Some idiot has moved a blacksmiths guild meeting forward by a couple of months. Seems its urgent. I bet it's to do with the apprenticeship Scholarship!"

"The what?"

"Every year, usually at the end of it, all members of the blacksmiths guild have to select an apprentice to enter some stupid competition, to find out who's the best teacher of them all. Failing ones can have their licenses revoked, and can be stopped from doing any work with metal, untill they've finished re-applying. If you win though you get a whole heap of any metal of your choice...you're apprentices weight in it, or some such thing. If they have moved it forward, then I aint got time to train you up enopugh to be ready for it! I could lose my entire license! my entire business!"

"Why did you join then?"

"Don't be daft, I helped found it. It was to stop rogue smiths from stealing all our proffits! But the past few years the competiton has become all that matters."

"When's the meeting then Stan?"

"About 8 tonight! We got to leave no later that about 4 just to get there!"

"Why don't we leave now then?"

"Becasue I left Silphian with the Harolds untill tomorrow, when I thought I'd be needing her for the trip! Doing the run twice in a week isn't good for a horse of her age! I can't even ask for her back, they've only gone and taken her to the vets in Gailberg because she has a limp these dsays, thought they were doing me a favour!" He swore under his breath.

"Couldn't you borrow someone elses?" Ethern ventured. Stan looked at him for a second.

"Nah, it'd be rude, and most folks round here don't want their horses going to the big cities, heard to much about horse theifs and the like, and you know how those things can be blown out of proportion!" He swore a few more times, but these were with less energy, as he began to feel more and more worn down, and hopeless.

"What happens if you don't show up?" Ethern asked, knowing the answer would probably be bad.

"I might aswell start looking for another job." Ethern bit his lip slightly.

"Stan...you remember our talk yesterday?"

"What?...yes ofcourse I do, what about it?"

"..Nothing just thinking, sorry. I think I can get us some horses, but I need to go talk to someone first."

"Look, Eth., it's not worth it, no one from around here will lend them, especially if you tell them where you're planning to take them! community spirit my..."

"Stan! just let me see this person ok?" Grudgingly Stan nodded. Ethern got up and sprinted out of the black smiths. He ran through the back door of the pub and up the stairs to his room, stopping only when he got there, and even that was a brief visit. Then he shot back down the stairs, taking them three at a time. Then he zoomed down the main street, towards the end of the village. He skidded to a halt, and knocked ferociously on the door. The mayor of the village, who was also Robyn's father opened the door. He rolled his eyes slightly and stood aside. Ethern bolted up the stairs and hammered on the door. Robyn opened it a fraction, saw who it was, for the second day in a row, and yanked him in, just like before.

"Can I make the cards real?" He asked her as soon as she had shut the door.

"Ethern, people will notice one of those monsters suddenly appearing, you'll be up on the stake faster than you can say, 'Oops! Sorry! I just wanted to see if I could!'"

"So, it's possible?"

"Ethern! please...don't."

"Don't worry, I just need a couple of horses, and I noticed this card last night..." He showed her the card that had had 1820 as it's attack, and had been in his second draw of pairs. She sighed a slight sigh of relief.

"A Heard of Fiery Stalions!" She read out. Compared to some of the cards, it was almost picturesque, as if it was part of a delicate painting or something, and the Fiery part was just describing their copper colour. "Lets take them outside a ways. Don't want anyone to this is act of magic now, do we?" She smiled faintly. She also picked up an old book from her shelf, scanning through the pages untill she found the right spell. She placed a book mark there, and then they headed out. The headed to the end of the village and took the turning towards the woods. They went deep inside.

Once she was satisfied, Robyn opened up the book and read it through a few times to make sure she had got it right, before telling Ethern what to do. "Right, hold the card out, facing away from you. Other way up. Concentrate. Remember, you only want two of them, not the heard. Feel your magic. Feel the flow of the environment. The words you have to magically channel are 'Icsthos Cassos Yeminok Ferrashee, Heraakai Mienai Cassos, Meriantianus Northwae!' Then repeat for the second horse."

"ICSTHOS CASSOS YEMINOK FERRASHEE, HERAAKAI MIENAI CASSOS, MERIANTIANUS NORTHWAE! ICSTHOS CASSOS YEMINOK FERRASHEE, HERAAKAI MIENAI CASSOS, MERIANTIANUS NORTHWAE!" Ethern called out, throwing what he hoped was his magic behind it.