Prologue

This was it, this was the decision from which there would be no return.  The two friends looked directly into each other's eyes, managing not to squint despite the intense midday sun.  Everyone who was acquainted with them had very strong ideas about who they were and what they were doing.  Everyone was wrong.  As the dust swirled around them in the heavy September afternoon, the friends faced the moment they'd been preparing for, the moment they dreaded, the moment they knew was inevitable.

"You can still change your mind, and I'll go instead," one friend said to the other.

The second friend shook his head.  "No, it has to be me.  You know that."

The first friend shrugged.  "I thought I knew a lot of things," he replied.

"Yeah, me too," the second friend chuckled.  "But this is coming directly from the source.  We'd be stupid to fight it or try to change it."

The wind picked up again, and the two friends stood silently for a moment.  There seemed to be little else to say.

"You'd better get going, that boat's not going to wait for you," the first friend said.

The second friend nodded, and extended his right hand.  The first friend took a deep breath, braced himself, and reached his own hand out to meet his friend's.  Until next time, they thought simultaneously as they felt the strange power course through their joined hands, but they both knew that for them there would be no next time.  No, this had all been a terrible mistake.  They had trusted the old man, and the old man had made an error, either out of greed or a simple misreading of the signs.  But the old man was dead now, and it was useless trying to place blame.  Now it would be left to some future generation, to some unimaginable post-historic wanderers, to solve the mystery these two had unwittingly set out to unravel.  The mystery forced upon them by a confused and misguided old man.

The two friends released their grip on each other, and as the wind kicked up a cloud of dust, the second friend broke into a run and raced eastward as fast as he could, never looking back, never to return to this place again.

A sigh escaped from the first friend's mouth as he saw his friend disappear over the horizon.  It was the last breath he ever took in his life.