I transported to the city, got everything settled in under twenty minutes and teleported myself back to the castle as the proud owner of a new skill. At first I wanted to go straight to the First Temple and spend some quality me-time staging some visually impressive hazardous experiments. But then both Lena and Cryl began PM'ing me demanding to take them along so they could explore our clan's new home. Nothing prevented them from going there themselves using their Journey Home ability, but they were understandably wary of showing up there in the absence of the owner.

'Porting, grouping in, 'porting again. Home, sweet home. Inside the Temple, a Hell Hound was busy shepherding their litter. She'd all but jumped at us barking when she noticed me and cooled off.

"They're with me!" I pointed at the freshly-baked priests. Then my eye happened on a heap of scrap metal as high as I was tall. The heap gleamed purple, promising great returns once it was smelted down. Good dogs! Not only had they got hold of the moon silver: they'd retrieved it and somehow dragged it back to the Temple.

"Where's the pack's leader? Call her for me, please."

"Aww, puppies!" Lena squeaked behind me and rushed fearlessly toward the guarded nursery.

I winced, closing one eye, expecting the dog to lunge and the girl to scream, followed by the thud of a tombstone against the marble floor.

But apparently, the girl wasn't as simple as she looked. The Hound stifled a yelp, snatching back a trodden-on paw, then froze again in a Sphinx-like pose as the girl got busy cuddling the pups. Cryl and I exchanged glances, breathing a sigh of relief. What was it the Fallen One had said about her phenomenal immersion? Looked like it. At least the hounds seemed to have accepted her.

Then the Temple's reverential silence was disturbed by the screeching of metal. Claws scratched against the paving stones. I heard some familiar grumbling. A weird procession opened up to our eyes.

My good old Hound friend headed the group. I'd have recognized her anywhere after our combined stretch in the pokey. In actual fact, I think it was my new absolute memory that fixed the unique combination of the dog's features, from the shape of her scars to the pattern of her irises. Actually, I wasn't so sure any more. The idea of absolute memory had started to erode somewhat. Talking about her irises, I wasn't at all sure that I'd be able to draw an identical picture of them if you asked me to. To a degree, it sounded logical and even soothing: it meant we remained human with all our weaknesses, not some cyborg types with their memory crystals stored behind their belly armor panels.

A zombie dwarf was shuffling his feet behind her. He was pulling an improvised sledge loaded with mithril junk. The zombie didn't really look like an undead, more like a dwarf in exile who'd spent the last ten years in the mountains. A shabby cloak concealed a kit of full armor. A bandana covered signs of recent burns on his hairless skull. A beardless dwarf, now that was an oxymoron. Struggling under his heavy load, he grumbled almost voicelessly,

"According to the Haroun Convention, Article 6, Clause 4, the use of prisoner of war labor by private individuals is considered a third-degree crime and is punishable by..."

I didn't get the chance to hear the rest as one of the convoy hounds growled, driving the absent-minded lawyer forward.

The procession drew level with us and stopped, obeying a commanding bark. I gave them a friendly nod and turned to the chief bitch. "Great to see you again. It looks like the new lands are abundant with prey?"

Indeed, she seemed to have gained weight since I'd seen her last. Her once-dull armor gleamed with a mirror-like finish.

"Greetings, O Dark One," the Hound lowered her head. "We thank you for your permission to settle in these lands. Not an hour passes that we don't sing a song of joy. I don't remember ever having such an easy and glorious hunt! Our pups are bloated like the lazy gastropods in the Lord of Fire's own herds. They refuse to eat bones and cartilage, all they care for is freshly-killed meat!"

To show their agreement, the whole pack raised their heads and howled like some mad orchestra of chainsaws when they hit some hard gnarly bits. Their voices hit the supersonic waves that sent shivers up your spine.

I fenced myself off with my hands. "That's great! I'm so happy you like it! I can see you haven't wasted your time. Does it mean you've cleared the cellars and done what I asked you to?" I nodded at the mithril heap that was calling my name.

"We have, Priest. We've mopped up the cellars destroying over four hundred beings who believed the place to be their own. Many of them were indeed dangerous. But not many can still stand after my pack finished with them!" a note of smug boasting rang in her voice. "At first I thought you'd been mistaken. For a long time we couldn't smell a single crumb of the cursed metal. Then we discovered a whole heap of it piled up in one of the dead-end corridors. There we found this zombie, greedy as a dragon, crawling on top of it."

"I'm not a zombie!" the dwarf objected. "I am Durin the Smart, the Master of the Mithril Smithy, one of the defenders of these lands which suffered the steel invaders' ire. I was saved by the Element of Metal which I'd served all my life and which didn't let me die the final death."

"His greed didn't let him die," the Hound explained. "His soul couldn't leave his body after it obtained riches beyond the mountain kings' wildest dreams."

"Yes—greed!" the dwarf exploded. "The greed for knowledge! In all these hundreds of years I've studied every inch of the cellars collecting every crumb left by the steel invaders. Do you have any idea how deeply they'd delved into the secrets of metals? Can you fathom all the wisdom and the high secrets concealed in this heap of depleted ore?"

The dwarf boomed louder and louder, his voice reproaching: finally he had a chance to voice all the silent arguments he'd generated in all those lonely years of inner monologues. "You have any idea what this is? You really think it's a rock?"

Untangling himself from his harness, he sank his arms elbow-deep into the heap of junk, producing a smallish egg and shook it in front of my nose. The egg had a very recognizable body complete with a detonator and ring pull.

I shrunk, mechanically pushing Lena behind me, shielding her. "I believe I do," I said in a suddenly hoarse voice. "This is an offensive grenade. Looks remarkably similar to the famous RGD5."

"Pardon me?" the dwarf managed, speechless. "Offensive? Who would want to offend it? Actually, I called it the egg of the fire salamander. Have you ever tried to break one?"

I peered at the unfamiliar markings and fluorescent stripes that coded the grenade's type. "All you need to do is pull on the ring without letting go of the handle."

The dwarf sort of shrank in size. "I shouldn' have let go of it, should I? I didn't know that."

He opened his shabby cloak revealing homemade mithril armor plates peppered with ragged holes.

"Good job you kept your head attached," I sympathized.

"I didn't," he sighed. "Nor my arms. I respawned twenty-four hours later lying on a mithril heap. Your hound has a point. The Moon silver draws me and won't let me leave."

"Don't worry. We're going to melt it into nice neat ingots and lock it in the treasury. Maybe then it'll set you free."

The dwarf shook, hiding the grenade behind his back. I cast a meaningful glance at the empty space where it had just been. "How many of them have you got?"