Mickey Reichert - Dragonrank master

Though not at all certain of his statement, Larson wanted the chance to explore the main house. It was far more likely to furnish answers to the many questions which plagued him.

To Larson's relief, neither of his companions challenged him. Apparently, they realized he had more knowledge of the first Dragonrank Master's estate than seemed reasonably possible. In silence, they followed him to the house. Larson circled the building, trampling a lane of snow to the pale sands beneath it. Two casement windows set in the lower level were half buried in a drift. Time and wind-borne sand had worn the glass to polished convexity. The upper story held three windows, all intact and similarly timeworn. Concrete steps led up to a gray door into the second level. Larson climbed to the portal. The paint was apparently some sort of bonded epoxy; aside from some chipped flakes in the corners, it had weathered the centuries well.

Larson grasped the aluminum doorknob. For several seconds, he stood without moving. Something seemed fundamentally wrong with dragging his companions into the world beyond the door; he had no idea what the collision of past and future might yield. And Gary Mannix might have set magical or technological traps to protect his estate. Larson suspected a device in this dwelling converted the electricity harnessed from the smaller building into usable household current. The possibilities were endless and more than possibly lethal. Still , Larson reasoned, if Mannix didn't want people in his estate, he wouldn't have revealed the gate opening sequence. Even a person familiar with such a device would have required years of trial to crack a seven digit code . Comforted by this thought, Larson twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

A blast of hot, stale air struck Larson. The panel swung a full ninety degrees. Sunlight flooded in, revealing a rectangular room which ended in a window. Office furniture lined the longer walls, choked with dust. Directly to the left of the entry way, a set of stairs led to the lower level. A short distance farther, on the same side, a doorway opened into another room.

Larson took in the scene at a glance. The furnishings consisted of three filing cabinets, a laboratory desk with a scattering of journals, bookshelves built into the wall and crammed full of texts, and an unidentifiable assembly of gauges and dials in the far corner. A human skeleton was draped awkwardly across a chair of wood and vinyl before the desk. Larson took a shuffling step into the room. The movement dislodged a pile of dirt which whirled madly through the air, sparkling in the sun's rays. Grit stung Larson's eyes and clung to the moist membranes of his mouth. Blinking and spitting, he motioned his companions back and waited for the debris to settle. The interior felt stifling compared with the late autumn coolness outside, and he doubted the warped windows could be opened.

Walking with more caution, Larson made a rapid circuit of the room. The desk supported the skeleton's arm and skull across a blank page of an open journal. Scraps of leathery skin still clung to the yellowed bones; the walls had protected it from insects and the elements. Too accustomed to death to concern himself with the remains, Larson removed a bound journal from the top of the stack and flipped to the title page. It read, "The Acceleration of Anti-muons to Super-relativistic Velocities and Its Applications to Time Travel by Galin R…" The last name was smeared beyond further recognition. "… and Gary Mannix." Though not discarding the potential significance of his discovery, Larson closed the journal and moved on to the shelves.

The books on the mantles fell into categories, many of their titles obscured by mold. The upper levels held psychology texts and guides to hypnotism, witchcraft, and other paranormal phenomena. Beneath it, a row of physics and history tomes stood in stately contrast. The historical references held a definite bias toward the Middle Eastern cultures. The last shelf consisted of a mixed batch of hardbound science fiction novels, a bible, and assorted medical and literary references. Many of the volumes held the same Library of Congress classification tags Larson had thought he recognized on the books of the current Dragonrank Master. A glance down the stairwell re-vealed a well-equipped kitchen and a bathroom. The remaining room appeared to be a bedroom.

The tour took only a few minutes, but the trapped, ancient air felt suffocating and centuries of grime burned Larson's lungs. Until he had a chance to identify the strange gadgets in the laboratory and kitchen, he knew that allowing his companions to explore might prove too dangerous.

Gaelinar stood in the doorway, blocking Bramin's entry. Only Taziar had followed Larson inside. Snatching up the half dozen journals on the lab bench, including the one wedged beneath the skeleton, Larson caught Taziar's arm and herded the climber to the exit. "I'm not sure what we have here, but I'd rather examine them where I can breathe and see." His brief inspection had also revealed overhead lighting. But even if Mannix had created a working system for electricity, Larson doubted the bulbs could have survived.

Larson led his companions back outside, leaving the door propped to air out the building. Scraping aside snow to uncover the sand beneath, they sat in their manufactured clearing. To Larson's relief, Bramin came, too; apparently the dark elf wanted to keep track of his quarry or else he assumed the journals in Larson's arms held more interesting information than the house itself. And he's probably right. If these are, as I believe, Gary Man-nix's private notes, they may hold a wealth of magical and technological data . He shook his head, picking the first volume up in a hand which had begun to tremble. The mind boggles .

Taziar and Gaelinar seized later volumes as Larson flipped through page after page of formulas and calculations. The paper was watermarked, stout and sturdy enough to have survived the centuries. Tiny letters and numbers swarmed across each leaf in tight bunches, the mathematics punctuated by paragraphs of information, most of which made little sense to Larson: "The long-held theory that acceleration to light speed creates infinite mass is incorrect. No actual data has been previously available for particles traveling at or beyond light speed, only the extrapolation of Einstein's equations. We have shown that energy translates to mass up to a point. Beyond this threshold, energy will increase a particle to super-relativistic speed. Once the barrier of light speed is breached, a particle of insignificant mass liberates infinite energy. We have already determined time travel must be easier for energy than matter. Once the antipar-ticle mu was accelerated to super-relativistic speed, we might be able to store the massive energy this process would create in some alternate part of the Earth's orbit. If we can find the date of Nova, perhaps directly on our own sun." The text lapsed back into numerical incomprehensibility.

Larson looked up. Gaelinar and Taziar had lain aside their volumes in disgust, unable to interpret the English writings. Bramin stood behind Larson. Intent on his findings, Larson had not noticed the dark sorcerer reading over his shoulder. Apparently, however, Gaelinar had. The Kensei studied Bramin through narrowed eyes, his hand on his sword hilt.

Bramin broke the hush. "Some sort of magical runes."

Larson scooted around to face Bramin, annoyed by the abstraction which had kept him from perceiving an enemy at his back. "English, actually."

Taziar and Gaelinar exchanged glances. Larson's explanation held no meaning for them.

"I can read it," Larson clarified. "It's written in a language I understand." He added belatedly, "Elven, sort of." He hated to deceive his companions, but it seemed far less time consuming. He wanted as much of the daylight hours as possible to decipher the writings.