I waited until the others had left to change clothes and go back to Melisande's house. I had pulled on a plain white t-shirt, a pair of black slacks, my steel toe boots and covered it all with the old surplus army jacket from my work room to replace the lost cloak. I'll admit the jacket looked a bit ridiculous and was mildly uncomfortable with all of its pockets stuffed full of stones and various vials of liquid but it's hard to replace a coat with two dozen odd pockets on short notice.

I let myself in with my copy of the house key and collected my gear. Melisande had done me the courtesy of replacing the lost weapons which gave me a brief pause, note to self: ask sister where she was getting her weapons from. It would be nice to have a supply other than what I could make or buy and I knew she didn't have the cash on hand to replace two daggers and a sword with less than a day’s notice. I ran a hand over my armor and inspected my main sword breathing a sigh of relief when I found that they had finished repairing themselves. The energy I'd drawn from Cassandra earlier and pushed into the relics seemed to have been enough to fix them and mend the wards and enchantments worked into them. My set of arm bands and rings were all there in a shielded cloth bag and their added weight was reassuring once I had them on. I walked out of the house a few minutes later feeling slightly more secure and dressed again in full battle gear and found Khan sitting on top of my car sunning himself.

“Find what you were looking for?” I asked as I opened the door and climbed in trying to ignore the disorienting sight of watching him sink through the Kia's roof. He stared out the window gloomily for a minute and then nodded.

“I found enough. So you have more of your memories back?” The look he gave me had enough sympathy in it that I had to focus on suppressing the urge to cry. “I don't know what's been going on today but you're an emotional wreck, Cathal.”

“I'd be less of a wreck if people would quit trying to be my shrink and let me work. It's been done and over with for several millennia at least, the fact that the memory is as fresh as if it was this morning doesn’t change that. Are you going to tell me what was so urgent for you to check on?” I settled down a bit as I performed the simple and familiar act of driving home.

“I wanted to verify the message you got.” He shifted and settled his head on the back of the passenger seat. “I'm still a bit unsure of why your former brother-in-law wants to destroy the wards to get revenge on you but his logic has always been a bit baffling to me.”

“Well, this is awkward. I think I remember him, but what’s the deal with him anyways? I mean as far as I recall he pretty much hated anything that breathed and wasn’t related to him but that’s about it.” I turned back down the drive to my house and parked letting the car idle a few minutes.

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“Nasty fighter without many scruples about how he wins, and willing to make deals with just about anything to get what he wants. He can turn into something close to what you’d think of as a wolfman, he’s also fond of using poison.” I grumbled a few words that made me feel a bit better despite not being useful and got out of the car.

“Great, so I have a homicidal bloodthirsty idiot with a penchant for making pacts with people worse than him and a taste for poisons that wants my head and for some reason thinks that destroying the seals around earth will help him get it.” I pushed my way through the underbrush behind my house into the small clearing in the stand of aspen where I’d laid down a circle of stones and started drawing in my energy and forming the shield around my mind and body that would hold me together for what I was about to do.

“Hey this wasn’t my idea; you pretty much volunteered for the job. So where are we going?” I closed my eyes and pictured myself as I was and then reached into the leyline flowing beneath me.

“I need to speak with Gwynn ap Nudd. I can’t just summon him up though so I need to go to his territory and that means Wales first and then getting a guide. I’m thinking the old Castle Narbreth should be a good starting spot.” Khan nodded and I felt him pull together his own power in the same preparations and wrapping a shield around my mind for me as I added the images I’d pulled up online a few months ago as background to the one of myself and then forced myself down into the flow of the leyline.

Let me just say leyline walking is not my preferred method of travel, it’s not easy and requires a lot of concentration. You start off by keeping a firm grip of who and what you are in your mind, then you wrap all of that in a shield of power, add in more mental focus on where you want to go and merge yourself into the nearest leyline. Then you have the slight matter of accuracy; you can only travel to the same type of leyline you touch, if you use an air leyline you have to step out of an air leyline, step into a water leyline and you have to come out of a water leyline. Since earth leylines are the most common and run pretty much everywhere they get used the most but judging exact location is a bit hard when you're inside the earth. Once you’re merged with the Earth leyline your perceptions tend to expand in all directions and there is a sense of crushing weight and a heaviness to your body that makes determining your direction difficult until you get the hang of it. My first time trying it eight months ago I had intended to go from Colorado to Washington State and ended up in Peru. It took me about a week to finally get home and I probably contributed to a few urban myths in the process. Having a mental image of where you wanted to go prepared in advance helped but it was still pretty hard to show up where you wanted instead of a hundred miles away. I just hoped I didn’t come out of the leyline at the bottom of the ocean.