Tossed Windston was, and at a speed so fast and a height so high, he couldn't believe it. He very much so overshot the top of the tower, which was many dozens of stories high, and ended up falling so far so fast that he thought Frem would miss him and he'd fall to his death.

  But that didn't happen; Frem, in a panic, dove for him, swooped up, and tackled him into the tower. They both shot past the madman so fast they didn't even see him, crashed down several flights of icy stairs before landing in what was a large corridor that led to a wide bedroom with vaulted ceilings and row after row of shelving and bookcases stuffed with knickknacks, trinkets, books, scrolls, and riches beyond reckoning. It was all orderly and clean, as if someone came through and picked up once and a while, dusted on a weekly schedule.

  The Wandman was in there, his face buried in a book. He looked up at them from his spot at a round wooden table where he sat before a frothing cup of steaming coffee.

  “Hello,” he said.

  The boys didn't say anything, just stood.

  “I'm glad you've made it. It wasn't an easy climb, even for me. I imagine it was much worse on you.”

  Still, they didn't say anything, and Windston held up his sword.

  “No need for that, friends,” the Wandman said, standing. “We're here for very similar purposes, though it may not seem that way for some time.”

  “What purpose is that?” Frem asked, his hands glowing.

  The Wandman smiled and his beard simply disappeared. His hair changed too as he grew taller and his clothes changed; at the end, he looked exactly like a male version of Agnessa Iadora; he was tall, even taller than Clement the Heath by two inches, and though he was thin, like Clement the Heath, he was more muscled, and his shoulders were broader. He wore a black set of armor like Frem had described in reference to the madman, and over it, big and old and patched and weathered, was a brown hooded cloak. The hood was down behind him and straight silver hair fell silky all about and beyond it, stopping at the small of his back.

  “Who are you?” Windston demanded.

  “My name is Clement,” the man said. “Clement Armassi the Second.” He had taken two steps forward and stood before them, tall and menacing, his face serious but not somber. His eyes were green and nearly glowing; when Windston looked at his energy, they were glowing, and brightly so.

  There was an air about him that made Windston tremble; there was a power in him like nothing Windston had ever felt, like a literal rushing whirlwind that sucked things toward it without making them move. Frem felt it too, though he didn't know it.

  “I'm Windston,” Windston said.

  “I know.”

  “And I'm-”

  “Frem,” Clement answered. “There are not many things I don't know about the two of you.” His face was beautiful, like a masculine Agnessa; it was terrifying too.

  “Have you been following us?” Frem asked.

  Clement smiled and shook his head. “I am here for a purpose, just as you are. I'm here to free the madman of his scourge. Though I won't do it alone.”

  Windston shrugged. “What do you need us to do?” he asked.

  Clement blinked once slowly, his face a pleasant calm. “You'll find what you seek down below. Go there, now. Do whatever it is you came here to do. The madman can remain that way a little longer.”

  Neither of the boys reacted quickly to what were actually demands. But they did eventually act. First Windston, and then Frem, moved over to the side of the room farthest from Clement, facing him all the while as they made their way to the door.

  Out the door and through the corridor, they found some stairs going down and separately felt chills of relief, though neither admitted it to the other. They must have walked a dozen flights before they found the bottom. There, they found more bookshelves, which covered almost every inch of the walls down there. There was a woven rug in the middle of the floor starting from the stairs and ending at the wall opposite them. At its edge, flush with the outer wall, was an open chest.

  Frem headed that way. Before he could get there, something shot out from his bag, upward, and hung up above them radiating a blue light. It moved slowly forward, and then plummeted into the bottom of the open chest and was gone.

  Frem struggled with his bag and, fumbling it, spilled out its contents on the floor. There was dry hay everywhere – scattered within it, the six remaining keys. The orange one glowed brightly and moved west. Windston grabbed it in his hand and found that he saw an image of a dark forest and suddenly knew where it was. “It's in the Freelands,” he said. “West. That's where we go next.”

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  “Crap!” Frem finally said, gathering up the other seeds and shoving them back in their sack. “Now it'll never hatch!”

  “What?” Windston asked, but his friend was inconsolable. Frem was on his knees, his head to the ground, and he wept and wept and wept.

  “What?” Windston asked again.

  Frem lifted his head, and it was revealed that he was crying real tears, and that slobber dangled from his upper palate and spilled out past his tongue so that it hung from his chin. “It's gone,” he moaned, his eyes closed. “It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. No dragon. No dragon can sprout here. It's gone. Under the chest. Under the ground. The hard ice,” he said, pointing “the floor, forever,” he said, pounding the floor.

  “Shhhhhh!” Windston shushed, heading over to Frem to pick him up.

  Frem resisted him and stood, pouting. “You don't care.”

  “Of course I care. But I think you're wrong. It sank right into the floor. Whatever comes back up from it will do the same the other way!”

  There was a brief pause. Frem seemed to be mulling over what he said. “Yeah, well… I wasn't really crying,” he said, but his words came out with difficulty as he was still very much choked up.

  “I know,” Windston said. “No big deal. Come on. Let's go. Let's go do what the guy wants and get the hell out of here.”

  Frem nodded. “You have to do it, though,” he said, still crying.

  “I will,” Windston said. “Whatever it is.”

  “Good,” Frem said, and they made their climb back up.

  Clement met them at the entrance to the corridor that led to the room he'd been in. His hood was up, and he lifted his eyebrows once as a hello to them and gestured toward the rising stairs.

  Windston nodded, and they all went up together, the sounds of clambering, shouting, wailing and sobbing growing louder as they rose.

  They continued up in silence among themselves. Sixty flights they climbed, each rise shrinking in width so that, at the end, the tower was only fifty paces across.

  They all stopped at what was a final arching doorway with no doors. Clement nodded and pointed and the two led the way inside.

  To Windston, it felt like a dream he'd had before. He remembered walking that walk for some odd reason and knew what would come next to some degree of accuracy. There was a wooden table, rectangular this time, with sixteen places and sixteen chairs, each with a covered dish save for the far side head, where the biggest chair sat and at its place lay a half-eaten roast chicken.

  They could hear the madman beyond the wall behind that grand dining chair; something flew out – a shoe, it looked like – and hit the wall on the far side, which ran cat-corner to the great mouth.

  “As if I hadn't HEARD IT!” the madman yelled as another object, this time a silver tray, flew hurtling across the room.

  “I heard this, and I heard that!” he yelled. “They tell me on and on again. Over and over. Same thing. Every day. Again again again. AH!” he yelled, and he came out into the open, which startled both boys so much they jumped, which drew his eye.

  “You!” he said, looking right at Clement; the latter reacted only with a piercing stare. “You were the love of my life,” he said, wailing, trembling; and now he was looking at nothing on the ceiling, as he had fallen into a slump and then lied back. He was kicking and flinging his arms. “WHY?!” he wailed. “Why me, no! Not that. But why anyone? Why this? Why like this?”

  “He'll be up again soon,” Clement said, looking at Windston. “When he rises, give him…”

  “A slap,” Windston finished for him as he moved slowly that way. The madman's blue energy was both blue and green now; it was an outrageous explosion in flashes that bore within it the strength of an entire sun, an outward expression of power that equaled what was the vortex of Agnessa’s twin brother.

  “I had it!” the madman said. “ME! I! I DID! I KNEW!” he sat up, stood on his knees, and Windston lunged at him and gave him a very good smack right on the back of the head.

  There was an explosive wave of physical energy that rang out in a circular pattern, spreading wider and wider, and it overturned every person and item that it moved through except for Clement, who stood unfazed by all but a gust that blew his hair and robe.

  The madman hung suspended in air for a moment, his head down, his arms at his sides and rising. He was beautiful like Agnessa, like Clement Armassi II, like Clement the Heath; and he lunged at Clement, and they both suddenly swung swords they hadn't had just a moment ago, swords black like Clement the Heath’s, and in what was an explosion of attacks at near sound-breaking speeds neither Windston nor Frem could track. They both broke that barrier, and there was a sonic boom as they went so fast no one nearby could see them at all.

  They finished their battle only a few seconds after it had begun. Clement Armassi II stood tall, smiling as he brushed hair aside with a flick; his opponent, the former madman, eyed and lunged at Windston. Everything happened so fast that as Frem dodged what he thought was a general attack on any one of them and flew toward the gape in the wall, the former madman had bound Windston’s arms and sword to his sides with all four of his limbs, and, with him in his clutches, flown for the same gape and beat Frem to it; he shot off like a rocket toward the sky and disappeared with Windston as a twinkle as they burst out of the atmosphere and into outer space.

  Frem could do nothing but watch it happen. Bombo caught sight of it too and wailed. They both wailed then, but only Frem foolishly took off in that direction firing blast after blast after blast at them with the Buttcracker.

  The high priest of the Vicar, Clement Armassi II, did not give chase. He stood at the ledge from where they had leaped and perceived where it was they had last been before the energy signature was blocked.

  He stood there like a warrior on that ledge, his sword at his side, his hair blowing in the frigid winds.

  Bombo, who had been staring at Frem, looked up at the priest and clinched his fists. He wanted to yell at him but he also feared him without understanding why.

  So, there he stood, staring up at the platinum warrior with a sword like a black blade etched with runes that glowed in a race from the hilt to the tip again and again and again. His focus was not the former madman and his catch now, but his obsession, which hung in the blue sky same as always of late – twinkling, shining, ever staring their way; the Red Star.

  End.