Chapter 1

Potter and Knight

Hagrid helped Harry on to the train that would take him back to the Dursleys, then handed him an envelope.

"Yer ticket fer Hogwarts," he said, "First o' September - King's Cross - it's all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she'll know where to find me...See yeh soon, Harry."

The train pulled out of the station. Harry wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out of sight; he rose in his seat and pressed his nose against the window, but he blinked and Hagrid was gone. He pressed his face to the window and tried to look around to the sides of the train, but all he succeeded in doing was leaving a cheek shaped imprint on the glass.

'Was that magic?', he wondered, eyes wide. But that was that, and Hagrid was gone now. So back to the Dursley's it was. Sighing in a manner quite melancholy for a eleven year old, he sank bank into his seat, or tried to anyway, as halfway there his face was grabbed by a disembodied hand coming THROUGH the solid glass window and he was yanked out of the train. Harry tried to scream, but felt a tingly something hit him and all was darkness.

Schizophrenix grunted as the boy went limp in his arms after being hit with a handy little spell the healers in 's used to quieten some of the more...excitable of their inmates. Hauling the kid into a more secure grip, he adjusted the folds of his invisibility cloak and glanced about. The muggle who had been next to his quarry was still lost in the folds of his newspaper and did not seem to have witnessed his minor indiscretion. Minor. Because the great Harry Potter was still a minor. Get it?

Pausing to see if he heard some disembodied laughter, he sighed in frustration when there was none. Ye Gods, all the voices ever did was threaten him and whisper the occasional gossip. You'd think they'd be more appreciative of some quality humour. With his wand clutched in one hand and the boy in another, he scanned his surroundings, eyes wide and twitchy. Catching no sight of the half-giant (how did someone so big just goddamned disappear, anyhow? Was the filthy half-breed doing magic?), he slunk and slithered, weaving in between the crowd and exited the station.

Still slinking and slithering, for a death eater could never be too slithery, he slithered right into a deserted alley and behind a rather greasy trash can. Crouching down, he counted to twenty and peeked over the side, wand ready to give a bit of the ol' Avada if Hagrid suddenly popped up. Seeing no pursuing half giants, he grunted and turned, disappearing with a pop and taking along with him our newly minted wizard.

In an entirely unrelated novel...

'Come, Azash!' Otha, the immortal king of the Zemochs, bloated by years and excess, pleaded. 'Awaken! Hear the prayer of thy servants!' His eyes as he took in Sparhawk, standing with his sword drawn like death himself, were wild.

The idol's deep-sunk eyes had been closed, but now they slowly opened, and that greenish fire blazed from them. Sparhawk felt wave upon wave of malevolence staring at him from those baleful eyes, and he stood, stunned into near-insensibility by the titanic presence of an Elder God.

The idol was moving. A kind of undulation rippled down its body and the tentacle-like arms sinuously reached forth,-reaching towards the glowing stone, the Bhelliom, in Sparhawk's hand, yearning towards the one thing in all the world which offered restoration and freedom from where the God had been cast and bound by the Younger Gods of Styricum.

'No!' Sparhawk's voice was a harsh rasp. He raised his sword above the Bhelliom. 'I'll destroy it!' he threatened, 'and you along with it!' The idol seemed to recoil, and its eyes were suddenly filled with amazed shock. "Why hast thou brought this ignorant savage into my presence, Sephrenia?', it demanded of the small lady, his tutor in the Styric arts.

The voice was hollow, and it echoed throughout the temple and in Sparhawk's mind as well. Sparhawk knew that the mind of Azash could obliterate him in the space between two heartbeats, but for some reason Azash seemed afraid to bring his power to bear upon the rash man who stood menacing the Sapphire Rose with drawn sword.

"I do but obey my destiny, Azash,' Sephrenia replied calmly. "I was born to bring Sparhawk to this place to face thee. '

"But what of the Destiny of this Sparhawk? Dost thou know what he is destined to do?' There was a kind of desperation in the voice of Azash.

'No man or God knoweth that, Azash,' she reminded him. 'Sparhawk is Anakha, and all the Gods have known and feared that one day Anakha would come and would move through this world committed to ends which none may perceive. I am the servant of his Destiny, whatever it may be, and I have brought him here that he may bring those ends to fruition.'

The idol seemed to tense itself, and then an irresistible command lashed out, overpowering and insistent, and the command was not directed at Sparhawk. Sephrenia gasped and seemed almost to wilt like a flower before the first blast of winter. Sparhawk could actually feel her resolve fading. She wavered as the force of the mind of Azash peeled away her defences.

He tensed his arm and raised his sword higher. If Sephrenia were to fall, they were lost, and he could not know if there would be time to deliver the last fatal stroke after her collapse. He drew the image of Ehlana's face in his mind and gripped his sword-hilt even more tightly.

The sound was not audible to anyone else. He knew that. It was in his mind and only he could hear it. It was the insistent, commanding sound of shepherd's pipes, and he knew a fleeting sense of relief. "Aphrael" he called out in a deadly calm voice, "Get the others away". And raised his sword and brought it down on the blue rose. It shattered, and a brilliant blue light engulfed his senses, and then all went dark.