“Thanks, ” said Wyndrune sourly.

“Well, ” said Kira, “now that we’re all up, what do we do about

this dream? You can’t tell me it was just coincidence.”

“No, I don’t believe it was, ” said Modred, nodding agreement.

“However, it’s possible that it might have been a side effect of the

bond the runestones forged between us. One of us might have

simply had an ordinary nightmare and its intensity might have

triggered a telepathic communication of the dream to the rest of

us.”

“I suppose that’s possible, ” said Wyrdrune, “but nothing like that

has ever happened before. Except that time Kira and I shared the

same dream when that necromancer took you prisoner in England.”

“If only there was some way we could communicate directly with

the runestones, ” Modred said.

Except for Billy, who would have dearly loved not having to share

consciousness with Merlin’s spirit, it was a frustration they’d all felt

many times before. The runestones had become a part of them, had

changed their lives irrevocably, and yet in many ways they still

remained a mystery.

It was a spell as old as time itself, dating back to the days of

prehistory, when another race of beings had ruled the earth. They

were called the Old Ones. The very fact that they existed was

known only to a small handful of people, as they were similar

enough to humans that their remains were indistinguish-able from

those of humans. There was, however, one essential biological

difference. The Old Ones were immortal. Unlike humans, there was

apparently no limit to how many times their cell lines could divide.

They could be killed, but their immune systems were far superior to

those of humans and they did not age.

The Old Ones had been magic-users. They had enslaved primitive

humans, using them to perform labor and as a source of life energy

to empower their spells. Yet as the humans evolved, the Old Ones

gradually ceased to look upon them as anything more than beasts

and many of them came to feel that it was cruel and wasteful to

destroy them in order to cast their spells. Under the leadership of

their ruling elders, the Council of the White, they began to practice