Siege engines sent fiery death hurtling towards the walls of the city-state. Sorcerers aimed deadly spells. Legions of tightly disciplined druchii hurled themselves at the gates while the asur fought against traitors within their own walls.

In the mountains, hordes of Chaos-worshipping barbarians chanted outside the walls of the mighty fortresses built by Caledor the Conqueror. Their armies had already overrun much of thinly populated Cothique and were ready to move south.

Along the coast of Tiranoc, druchii warships controlled the seas. The great fleets of the asur were rushing hither and yon in confusion, while the dark elves knew exactly what to do and where to strike.

Caledor sensed the disruption to the fabric of reality caused by N’Kari’s magical gates. The Witch King was using them to move his forces all too easily around Ulthuan. It gave him a great advantage, being able to take his foes by surprise and concentrate his forces wherever he wanted. Such mobility magnified the potency of his army many times over. Something needed to be done to neutralise it, but that could be achieved by nothing less than the destruction of N’Kari, and that was not a feat that many of Caledor’s pieces were capable of, and none of them were in the area of the city.

He knew he should not allow himself to be distracted. There were things that needed to be done. He reached down and picked up the piece called Teclis.

Teclis woke. His mouth felt dry and his head felt fuzzy. His thoughts came with uncharacteristic slowness. On the table in front of him was a book of spells, and diverse other things including High Loremaster Morelian’s translation of the Slann tablet Teclis had found in the ruins of Zultec. It all came back to him. He was in a chamber that was part of the Maze of Books below the White Tower of Hoeth.

Teclis shook his head. It was a mistake. The contents of his stomach roiled volcanically and for a moment the room tilted. It was more than just his physical frailty reasserting itself. It was something else, a reaction to his dream, if dream it had been, and he was enough of a sorcerer to very strongly doubt that. It had seemed so real, so concrete.

Had he really talked to the Archmage Caledor, an elf more than six thousand years dead? Had he spoken to the ghost of the creator of the Vortex, the huge spell that kept Ulthuan above the waves and the world safe from being overwhelmed by the dark cosmic magic of Chaos? Had the archmage really told him to protect his brother Tyrion, when all his life it had been Tyrion who had protected him?

It all seemed so unlikely, yet he did not doubt its reality for a moment. He had been given a warning and he had better deliver it at once to the head of his order. He had been sent to tell the High Loremaster to prepare for war.

He felt something else, a premonition of disaster even stronger than the one that had been hanging over him ever since he and his brother had returned to Ulthuan from the jungles of Lustria. He rose unsteadily to his feet, picked up the papers on the table and made for the exit of the small chamber, praying that this time he did not get lost in the spell-warped maze beneath the tower.

The corridors did not twist and turn around him in a way that would baffle his senses. Spells did not prevent him from finding the stairwell that led back up into the library.

Even as he emerged into the great book-filled chambers, his sense of unease grew stronger. The rooms were deserted. He had never seen that before. It seemed somehow unnatural that there should be no scholar in the Great Library at Hoeth. He doubted that such a thing had happened in an age of the world. There was always someone in the library, no matter at what hour of the day or night.

It was as if some great disaster had struck Hoeth while he was in the Maze of Books.