"I'm Brady the Brass - I hear you've been looking for me. I got a minute, and you got some questions. I gather you never got to talk to Elias the Ranger. If it's all the same, I'll talk now, and you can ask your questions later.

"As far as I can make out, we're all in a lot of trouble. The more I learn about the situation, the scareder I get. When I spilled the beans to Elias, I figured he’d get a hold of some high-powered people and do something about this cult. Sorry he ended up that way - you guys friends of his? All the same, I did warn him, and I didn't hold nothing back. I'm warning you guys, too: these guys play for keeps. Or maybe mercs like you already know that." (He laughs.)

'Well, right from the start I knew that the Baron’s half-breed mutt of a girlfriend was trouble. She was as tough as they come, and she had him around her finger. He must have known she was trouble, too, because the more he saw her, the more crazy dreams he had. I thought it was great when he wanted to go to Al’Thorazeen-that'd be the end of her, see, and things would get back to normal. I liked the guy, and I owed him a lot.

"It seemed for a while that everything would work out. Montor was a lot of fun, but once we got to Al’Noth, the Baron started having dreams again about meeting a god, and crap like that. But now he wasn't drinking, and the girl wasn't around, and the gentlemen the Baron had asked along started acting nuttier than the Baron did, and so I said to myself, 'trouble is somewhere up the road.'

"After I paid Faraz Najir for his junk, the Baron spent some time with it. He went off the deep end. There was a black kind of head-and-shoulder statue that he'd stare at for hours. And there was a map that he'd study and study - like a normal guy would check out a beautiful woman like the Baroness. He started telling me that we could meet the "god" as soon as he destroyed the eye and opened the path. Don’t get me wrong, I know there are gods and the like, but they don’t answer just because some crazed idiot comes a-knockin’.

'That hotshot Berrthust should have talked the Baron down, but he only encouraged him. So the first night that we were up the Al’Haz at Megalos, the Baron snuck out and climbed up the Red Pyramid. Any of you guys ever climbed a pyramid? They're steep! The Baron started up that pile like a wild kobold. Never looked back or hesitated once, which proved to me that the poor bugger was absolutely crazy. But I followed him up." (He laughs again.) "I was crazy too, but I had learned a few "tricks" to keep me from falling.

"For about two thirds of the way up the Red Pyramid, you just climb up and over big blocks, sort of like something some dumb kid could make by piling up a million great big wooden play blocks. The ancient Al’thorazeen pyramid builders filled in all the gaps with nice smooth stone, but then later people stole that nice stone from around the bottom of the pyramid the high stuff was too hard to grab, and they couldn't finish the job without employing some of those magical-type people. Well, the Baron zipped right up this part, too, with me still behind, my eyes bulging out 'cause I could barely find handholds to keep from bouncing down the whole damn pyramid regardless of the tricks I knew. Either he was getting some "help" at that point or he was damn lucky. I guess I’ll never know.

'There's a little flat place at the tip of the pyramid. When the Baron reached the flat place, he put on some kind of robe and started making weird sounds, as though he had flipped for good. I’ve seen a lot of things in my travels, but there ain’t no priest anywhere that does the things that the Baron did that night. I figured he’d give it up after he saw it wasn’t doing anything, but then there was a hell of an explosion with all kinds of funny echoes and screams with it, and a big red flash of light. Now, I’ve fought against a mage or two in my time, and I know that nobody has power like that! I was damn lucky I was still on the pyramid. Well, I lay there for a minute until it seemed safe to go on. He looked at me and said, 'The eye is gone, Brady. Now we can be gods.'

"Well, that was just the Baron talk, you know, but beside him there was a big patch ripped right out of the stone, and it looked fresh. When I went back the next day, the patch had been filled in, as though the pyramid had repaired itself, except for the top most stone. But near the base of the pyramid, I found part of a rock which looked like it could have been in that patch originally, and it had this sign on it." (Brady the Brass sketches a mysterious sign.)

"Now I know what it was - its strong magic kept evil things away from us, and the Baron deliberately broke its power

'Two days later, the whole gang-Penhew, the Baron, Berthust, and Patty gave me the slip and disappeared in the Bent Pyramid. Some of the messenger boys went to find them, and they came out shrieking that the pyramid had eaten the respected Kerberonians, woe, woe, woe. Then just like a fireball landed in the middle of them, the workers run in all directions! The whole dig was deserted. In five minutes the only person left in the whole area was me. Well, I went in. Sure enough, nobody was inside. I was worried.

"But, a long time later, out come all the missing people from the pyramid. the Baron says they'd been to Al’Thorazeen, to the real Al’Thorazeen. And that was about the most sensible thing he said. Penhew looked like he had lost about five years. And Patty and Berthust both seemed somehow changed. Nobody would explain where they'd been, and nobody cared that after that it was hard to hire workmen.

"After that, when I'd wake up in the nights, the rest of the gang would be talking creepy lingo like I'd never heard before. Something like what the Al’thor natives speak, but mixed in with a language far more alien. Then one evening the Baron said that he was going to show me the power of what they'd learned. We went out into the desert with a group of Al’thorazeen workers on loan from Shakti. Everybody started screaming weird words and songs, and Penhew beat the drum that we got from Najir. When creatures started coming out of the ground and eating the Al’thorazeen workers, and the Baron and the others started laughing, why I took my leave, as they say, and decided that perhaps the inside of a bottle was a little more sane. The Baron found me the next day and warned me that I'd better change my attitude. Well, I owed the kid, and I wouldn't desert him, but after that I started thinking real good.

Then we went to Sivar, and the Baron filled me in during the trip. We had found a "true" god – a god that created the universe, he said, who would rule the Seven Lands, and we would rule with that god, for we were the "Chosen" of the god. The god had picked us to open the way for his return. And there was enough in what they said – and in what I saw – to make me listen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some ignorant peasant when it comes to magic. I’ve seen what those skilled in the arts can do. Let me tell you, this was nothing like I had seen before. Every week Penhew seemed a little younger and a little livelier. Patty was sick a lot. We were going to leave Hrothgar from some place in the mountains where there was no river, no caravan trails, no local guards, and nobody who looked very friendly. I figured that Brady the Brass wouldn’t live very long there, so I made some arrangements. On the last night in Hrothgar, I made sure the Baron was going to sleep for a long while, and appropriated what was left in the cash box (it was all the Baron’s money, anyway), and got me and them aboard an unscheduled caravan to Caithness.

"Later I found out that my guess was right. I hear from my sources a lot of people died, but Penhew, Berthust and Patty weren't among them.

"Anyway, my arrangements went off without a hitch - that happens when you think small and carry a lot of uncut stones. When we got to Caithness, we left the caravan before the city walls and found a fisherman who was willing to go to Palacen for a few gold. From there we hopped an ocean trader to Bandur, and in Bandur we dyed our hair, got some decent clothes, and sailed for Perth.

"Now, on the caravan to Caithness, the Baron got some sleep, and he seemed to wake up a different person. I guess that being away from the influence of those other people let him return to his old self. I told him we were in a lot of trouble, and that we needed to hide out, and reminded him about the Natives being killed in Al’Thorazeen, and the god stuff, and so on, and he could remember it all right, although it didn't seem very important, somehow. But he understood the logic of the situation. After a week or so, though, his nightmares started, and he began to go off the deep end. He was beginning to realize some of the things he had done.

"I spent quite some time in Zarmok City while I was a merc, and I had a fair number of friends here. By the time our ship put into Belzon, the Baron could go no farther. He began shrieking at shadows and everything that moved. So I put him in a sanitarium there-I had to use up most of the remaining money to get him settled. Then I went on to Zarmok City, believing that I'd never again see any member but the Baron of that damned expedition.

"So I thought, until I looked through a spy glass at a certain yacht, and saw Sir Aubrey Penhew preening on the deck of the Dark Mistress."