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authority.”
    “And there has only ever been one such ring,” Owen said. “That’s the point.”
    “But it’s the same ring,” said Jesamine. “You only have to look at it to see that. How is this possible?”
    Owen looked at Lewis, who shrugged uncomfortably. “A gray-clad leper called Vaughn gave me the ring,” said Lewis. “He said it came from you. Except I’m pretty sure it wasn’t really Vaughn, on the grounds that he’s been dead for years . . .”
    “I smell the interference of a certain shape-changing alien,” said Owen. “But there’s no way he could get the ring, unless I chose to give it to him. So perhaps I will, at some time in my future and your past. Time’s a funny thing, with a distinct preference for circles.”
    Brett rubbed hard at his aching forehead. “Can we please go to Mistworld? It’s only full of terrible things like crime and intrigue and thuggery; things I can understand.”
    “Shut up, Brett,” said Jesamine, not unkindly.
    “Are you sure you really want to do this?” Lewis said to Owen. “Time travel, going back who knows how far into the past, just so you can go head-to-head with the Terror, alone? Couldn’t you take some of us with you?”
    “No,” said Owen. “I wish I could. The whole business scares the spit out of me. But you’re all needed here, just as I’m needed there. I have to be going now, before I start coming up with some really good reasons to put it off. So much to do, so much time to search through to do it in. I’m sorry we couldn’t find the time to get to know each other better, Lewis. Do your best, and try not to worry so much. You’ll do fine. You’re a Deathstalker.”
    “You can’t go,” said Lewis. “I only just found you . . .”
    “We’ve been waiting so long for you to come back, Owen,” said Jesamine. “All Humanity is waiting to welcome you back. You have always been our greatest hero . . . Everything we did, we did for you. We built a Golden Age, just to be worthy of you.”
    “Stick around,” said Brett. “Give the worlds a chance to get to know the real Owen.”
    “No,” said Owen, grinning suddenly. “I’d only be a disappointment.”
    And just like that, he was gone.

    Owen had been feeling much stronger since he’d come back from the dead. Power seethed within him, demanding to be used. He didn’t need the help of the Madness Maze—or more properly, the baby at its core—to travel through time and space. There’s nothing like dying and being reborn to open your eyes to new possibilities. The shape-changing alien who served the Maze had once told Owen that all his powers came from a single base: the ability to change reality through an effort of will. Owen wasn’t entirely sure he believed that, but there was no denying he felt almost giddy with power and possibilities. He started with teleportation. Jumping from one planet to another, just by thinking about it. He didn’t need to search within himself for the power; it was as though he’d always known how. It was just a matter of letting go of time and space in one location, and stepping back on again somewhere else. And so in no time at all, Owen Deathstalker was back on Logres, in the city known as the Parade of the Endless, for the first time in two centuries.
    Owen had picked Lewis’s mind for the exact location of his destination before he left, and he materialized exactly where he needed to be: deep beneath the city, at the entrance to the Dust Plains of Memory. In Owen’s time the planet had been called Golgotha, and this had been the central computer Matrix. Standing alone at the gates to this gray mystery, Owen wondered if things had really changed much at all. The Dust Plains were staggering in their size and complexity, but he’d felt much the same about the computer Matrix.
    The air was hot and dry and very still. It smelled of nothing at all, which was vaguely disturbing. But there was still a pressure, a tension on the air, like the