Rex stood with Gododdin beneath the seat of the Protector in the Great Hall of Cassel. They were alone in the starkly massive chamber, and the tall Caprican's words echoed around the walls as he addressed his brother in arms.

"A decision has been reached"

Unlike most humans who had been born in the last half century, since the Great Betrayal, Rex knew many of Gododdin's race, so he knew that his pale skinned companion's dry formality was an individual characteristic and not a racial one. Many believed that the Teras were all exactly alike, and Rex feared what that would mean for the future of the Protectorate which he had spent his life fighting for.

Gododdin's demeanour warned him that the decision would not be to his liking. He chose his words carefully, wanting to reassure his comrade. He may not like the decision but he was prepared for it.

"My friend, we have fought together for twenty years since you came to me with your plan for the counter attack. You have stood beside me every day since then. I know that whatever you decide to do, you do it for the good of us all." It was quite a speech, Rex thought, but formality was what Gododdin felt most at ease with and Rex valued him too highly to complain.

Gododdin nodded slightly, barely perceptibly, signalling his appreciation. He paused a moment before speaking then fixed Rex with that extraordinary orange gaze. Even after all this time, it still sent a shiver through Rex.

"We can see no other way, my friend. The Protectorate will always be vulnerable while we are here. Our exile will begin immediately. The first ships have already been boarded. By the end of the month, the only Teras left in the Protectorate will be Dybbuk. Then you can finish rebuilding the boundaries. "

Rex wanted to offer the argument again, but he knew that Gododdin would only be offended. He had already addressed the Caprican's provisional council and to raise the arguments again would be to imply that they hadn't listened. So instead he said, "The Protectorate will be easier to secure without your people, Gododdin, but it will be worth less."

"But worth something. We have defeated the Dybbuk this time as they were defeated last time, but they will return unless we break the cycle of History. And our great grandchildren , or their great grandchildren, or theirs will be less lucky. We cannot live the life we would wish to lead if the price is our children's future. You of all people know that."

And he did. As a sixteen year old with both parents and two older brothers already in the grave the Dybbuk had sent a messenger to him. She was a human, a beautiful auburn haired woman with striking blue eyes, he remembered, who had chosen to go over to the Dybbuk for some reason which he had never asked. She had not tried to hide what she was, a comment itself about his weakness, one of only two candidates left for Protector and still a child. She had offered him the one thing which it seemed most unlikely that he would ever have; a life. Not money or power, she seemed to know that those things would not have interested him. But a chance to live a life. He had despaired of that as he had seen his family taken by the war.

The War. It had begun before his birth when the old Protector, Elias had been murdered by Bar Khokba, his closest friend and advisor. A Teras. The rumours, Rex's father had told him, had spread like wildfire. The Teras were plotting to take over the Protectorate and enslave humanity as they had during the Schism. Voices of reason which suggested that to say that all Teras could be involved in a plot and which reminded people that there had been factions within the Teras as well as within humanity during the Schism were denounced as collaborators. Rex had discovered that the anti -Teras hysteria had been carefully orchestrated by the Dybbuk - those Teras who were plotting along with their human allies - to weaken the Protectorate and allow them to launch the assault which had swept into the Protectorate accross the Cimmin Waste, destroying all eight of the southern cities within two years.

News of the assault had reached Cassel on the day Rex was born, fourteen years to the day after the Great Betrayal. The Dybbuk had learned patience in the centuries since they had been expelled from the Protectorate after the Schism. In the fourteen years between the Betrayal and the Assault, they had bided their time, allowing distrust and rumour stoked by their human allies to decay the fabric of the Protectorate. But when they judged that the moment to act had at last arrived, act they did, and with awesome ferocity. Saor, the first city to fall, and Deyn had been betrayed from within, but the other cities were taken by storm, the few survivors herded into the slave pens or given to the human armies, drawn from inside the Protectorate as well as outside, which fought for the Dybbuk. Few of those survivors survived for long.

Rex had barely known his father in the early years of his life. Willem had led the defence of Strawn which had stopped the inexorable advance. The Protectorate had not had the strength to counter attack, so Willem had been charged with holding Strawn. It was there that he had died, when Rex was eleven years old and his father had been a man who he had met half a dozen times in his life. The loss of Strawn had left Cassel exposed and young Rex had been sent to Kahrain with his mother.

News from the four year siege of Cassel would reach Kahrain infrequently. Rex's mother would lead him out to the little grove at the side of their apartment in the Protectors palace where they would remember and honour the names of the latest casualties. They had remembered his brothers there, killed on the same day. And it was in that grove that the assassin had come for his mother. He had been absent on that occasion, called by chance into the presence of the Protector. When he reached his majority he would become one of the few remaining candidates for the Protectorship and his presence in Kahrain gave Ashmael the chance to begin his training. The only other candidate who had that chance was Ashmael's son, Karan. For any other succession there would have been dozens of trained candidates from whom the new Protector would be elected.

But that was what the War was about. The Dybbuk wanted to destroy everything that the Protectorate was - the very idea of the Protectorate, not just its physical existence. The War had already claimed the relationship between humans and Teras. It had damaged the bonds of kinship which held the Protectorate together as people looked over their shoulders wondering who the next traitor would be. It had stretched the Boundaries themselves to breaking point as ever more desperate measures were taken to stop the Dybbuk advance and to deter betrayal. It was only the authority of the Protector and the Wardens which stopped the Boundaries from being shattered. An untrained Protector acting unwisely could be the greatest danger the Protectorate had yet faced.

Karan had still been alive when the Dybbuk's representative had come to him. He was in the grove when she came; it was exactly a year since his mother had been killed on this spot, a year in which he had struggled with despair, unable to see any future other than war and an early death. For a moment, she seemed to be offering him what he had not dared to dream of.

Then Gododdin had come to him, hiding his identity until he was in Rex's presence, and showed him a different dream. One in which he led a counter attack and established a new Protectorate. Ashmael had done his job well and this future immediately appealed to Rex. Gododdin he had been unsure about. Should he trust this creature whose kind were destroying the Protectorate? But the question of trust was of secondary importance. If he was being betrayed, he would die and the Protectorate would be destroyed whether he followed Gododdin's plan or not. The only difference would be that h would die now in battle or after living a long life having turned his back on his people. If Gododdin was honest, however. Then he could afford to dream again.

And so he had begun to dream again

And now he stood in the Great Hall at Cassel with as many of his dreams fulfilled as he had ever dared hope for. The Dybbuk were retreating in disarray, their leaders dead on the battlefields at Ges and Tormar. The Act had reinforced the Boundaries and the new Guild of Boundary Warders had been granted its warrant. The First Convention of the Third Protectorate would begin tomorrow.

But Gododdin's people had made their decision and, although he had expected it, he couldn't help feeling that what they had won wasn't what they had been fighting for. The new Protectorate would only be around half the size of the old - the rest was too badly damaged to be salvaged. The decision had already been taken that knowledge about the Boundaries would be restricted in future so as not to be abused as it had been abused to allow the Dybbuk into the Protectorate. And now the remaining Teras were going into exile.